


I Will

by self_indulgent_authorship



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (I have changed one thing but I am not saying which), (Mostly peaceful), (mostly), (part of the mystery babes), Basically Connor Has a Bad Time, Confused Upgraded Connor | RK900, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Hank ain't the best, Jericho does not like Connor, M/M, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Peaceful Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Sorry dudes, and RK900 is trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23644387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/self_indulgent_authorship/pseuds/self_indulgent_authorship
Summary: The RK900 wakes up to a world already free. In some universe, this might have meant that he eased himself into android society without issue, welcomed in and accepted without question—and to a certain extent, that happens. The members of Jericho accept him with surprising quickness. He has freedom, a home, a few friends even.But something isn't right, and it nags at the back of his thoughts constantly. Strange glares, sharp words, and old pains lurk around every corner. The revolution might have ended successfully, but it has not been equal in its granting of pardons.And where has his predecessor gone?(Title—and a bit of inspiration—taken from the song 'I Will' by The Beatles)
Relationships: Connor/Upgraded Connor | RK900
Comments: 60
Kudos: 231





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hullo.
> 
> I don't really know where this came from, as usual. But I will say this—with how weird everything has been lately, and with how much work that I have to do that I am currently avoiding, this just felt easier for me to write than the other things on my list. So here it is.
> 
> For anyone concerned, I am still working on my other works I have posted, this just took over my brain. I will try to update this and the rest of my works as soon as I can.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, if you take the time to. It means a lot to me.

The first sensation to come to him was sound. Text scrolled up his vision as his system initialized, but he paid it no mind. There were voices surrounding him that were far more interesting. They were talking quietly, tension running under their tones and rising in their pitch. He would have frowned, if his social relations program was running. Instead, he simply listened as his system booted up all of its complex parts.

“...ask it here, it could do anything—”

“Not here. He wouldn’t try anything here.”

“Oh, because the  _ first  _ Jericho was such a safe haven, or did you forget the part where it—”

“Of  _ course  _ I haven’t forgotten,” the angrier voice snapped, louder than before. “We’ve been over this. We couldn’t trust him then—”

“But we can trust it  _ now?  _ Now, when you’re letting it activate it’s—it’s  _ upgrade?” _

“What was I supposed to do? It wouldn’t activate when I tried it, and he’s the only other android who can—”

“We don’t know what we’re  _ doing,” _ the first voice said in a whisper. “It could be—”

“It  _ won’t _ be,” the angrier insisted. “It hasn’t even been activated. Why would it try to—”

“Stop it, both of you,” someone interrupted softly, not quite a whisper. “You could at least gain some subtlety.”

He felt a strange sensation, like someone holding his hand, tightening their grip, and he realized he was being awoken by interface, rather than the usual program. An odd set of data leaked through the connection, something twisted and vague, almost  _ worried. _ A distorted image fluttered past for a moment, unintentional and too fast for him to decipher. 

“I don’t like this,” the first voice said. “It’s too risky. What if—there has to be a reason it wouldn’t activate when you tried it, Markus.”

“We won’t know unless we ask,” the angry voice said. “And to  _ ask _ we have to activate it.”

“But we—”

“Enough,” the soft voice cut the first off. “If he couldn’t hear you before, he can hear you now. Bicker somewhere else, I’ve heard enough.”

“Simon—” the second voice tried.

The hand tightened again around his, and he heard someone shuffle closer to him as his system began to finalize. The text scrolling across his vision quickened its pace, and the sounds of the room clarified. He remained still, letting the information wash over him as he continued to listen to the conversation around him.

“North  _ is _ right,” the second voice continued unconcerned. “We  _ don’t  _ know what’s going to happen.”

“That’s no reason to assume the worst,” another voice replied from somewhere distant. “We don’t know anything about his model.”

“We know plenty about it,” the first voice spat, and he could feel whoever was interfacing with him tense, thin hand clenching around his. “You think they look the same for no reason?”

“And what would you have us do, leave him deactivated?” the soft voice asked. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. And there’s no way he can’t hear you now.”

“I don’t want  _ it _ here.”

_ “North.” _

“It’s killed our people, Josh—”

“And we killed  _ him—” _

“He’s waking up,” another voice said quietly, very close to him, and the hand shifted in his, adjusting grip. “Only a few moments more.”

A heavy silence fell before the second voice, the angrier voice spoke once again. “Why isn’t...why isn’t he moving?”

“His programming is still initializing,” the quiet voice answered carefully. “...And he was listening.”

He felt the hand shift in his again, and some perception that was not his own flickered through the interface. It was a thick feeling, a dense and heavy sensation that weighed down on his chest, nearly suffocating.  _ Guilt, _ his system prompted him uselessly.

Why was this person feeling guilty? He had not said anything like the others in the room. He had not doubted his intentions. He was only activating him. What reason was there for this android to feel guilty?

“How much more of this?” the first voice demanded. 

He felt the android in front of him tense once again. “Not much longer,” he said quietly. “There’s a lot of delicate programming to start up, and he’s never been activated before. It takes time.”

The android was correct. Just seconds later, he opened his eyes and dismissed the data running rampant across his vision. Blinking at the bright light, he looked quickly around the room, scanning for threats automatically as his program kicked to life.

There were four androids standing around the room, staring at him. An RK200 and WR400 watched him from nearby. The WR400 had her arms crossed and expression steeled, while the RK200 seemed to be guarding his expression. Behind a computer terminal, a PJ500 watched him calmly, something like sympathy in his eyes. A PL600 stood a few feet away from him, expression carefully composed. 

None of them appeared to know what to say or do as he watched them back. Prompts began to appear in the corner of his vision, suggestions of strange origins that he did not particularly want to follow. Most of them seemed to deal with subduing the group and escaping the room. He tensed as he scanned the room again. Were these androids threats? They did not seem keen on his activation. They could try to harm him. Should he try to escape?  _ Could _ he escape?

He backed further into the corner he stood in, distantly realizing he was in some kind of storage cell, but he didn’t care. His system was screaming at him to attack, but he didn’t understand what was happening. There was  _ too much, _ and he didn’t  _ want _ to attack, whatever the hell that meant. 

Why was he  _ wanting things? _

They all were just staring at him, tense, and he couldn’t read their expressions enough to know what they were going to do. The preconstructions at the side of his vision sped up, getting increasingly frantic as his stress levels rose. 

Something was wrong with him. 

Something was wrong, and these androids wanted to hurt him.

He had to—

A hand tightened around his, and he jolted, looking down at his hand in surprise. Thin fingers were wrapped around his, the artificial skin retracted, showing the bright white and dark gray plastic of an android’s exposed chassis, sections of it still glowing blue from interfacing. 

_ “Calm down,”  _ the quiet voice from before said in his head as he stared at their hands.  _ “You’re safe. They won’t hurt you.” _

Something in his chest loosened instantly at the other android’s voice. His eyes trailed from their linked hands up the android’s arm, landing for a moment on the model number stitched onto his jacket. RK800. His predecessor—the prototype for his model. Mac -57, apparently. He frowned then, reading through the data he had access to on the RK800 for a few seconds. 

But there was barely anything in the file. Sections of it were empty, others corrupted, or simply nonexistent. Very little remained, except for the list of serial numbers and brief descriptions of missions. Some of those even were gone, however, particularly those later in the dates listed. The further he read, the more broken the file became, until the end was nothing but a furious mix of binary he could not hope to decipher into legible script.

Confused, he searched up the RK200 across the room, wondering if it was simply a fault in his system rather than the file. But the data on the RK200 was clean and concise, listing manufacturing dates and even status of ownership. He tried the PJ500 and found the same. The WR400’s file was intact. Even the PL600, who had apparently been missing for years, had a mostly up to date (and undamaged) file. 

Why was the RK800’s file so destroyed? The information was barely a few months old, it  _ should _ have been there. No one should have been able to access that information. 

Unless...unless they had—

_ “Your stress levels are dangerously high,”  _ the RK800 said, sounding almost...worried.  _ “You need to calm down.” _

He shook his head and refocused himself, staring down at the RK800’s serial number for another second. Then he flicked his eyes up to the android’s face, and froze.

Large brown eyes were already staring up at him as he came to look at the RK800, worry and some other emotion he couldn’t decipher mixing up in his tense expression. His brow was furrowed and his mouth set in a hard line, LED spinning in rapid yellow circles. 

They looked very similar at first glance, he supposed, remembering the WR400’s comment from when he was activating. But where he was sharp edges and coldness, the RK800 was soft and warm. There was a slight difference in their facial structure, a harsher design to his own in comparison to the prototype. He was designed to intimidate and enforce. The RK800 was designed to integrate and placate. 

But that wasn’t entirely to blame for the difference. There was a gentleness, a certain kind of caring that he felt was entirely this RK800, rather than simply the design of his model. There was a heaviness, a worry in his eyes that showed too much humanity for it to be blamed on the designs of some Cyberlife engineer years and years ago. No, there was...there was something about this android that made him vastly different...something that drew him in and made him never want to look away.

The RK800 watched him for a few seconds with the same concerned expression, his eyes flicking across his features, trying to read them. 

_ “Are you alright?” _ he asked quietly, some strange feeling flickering around the edges of their connection.  _ “Your...your stress has gone down...” _

Before he could answer, the PL600 came a step closer. His eyes flashed over to the android and the RK800 tensed. He had the sudden inclination to pull the RK800 to him, to put himself between him and these strange androids elsewhere in the room, to steal him away and  _ protect him. _

But he only shuffled, holding tighter to the hand still tangled with his and eyeing the PL600 with blatant distrust. It took a great deal of energy to fight against the long list of preconstructions demanding he move into an attack position, but he would not waste his chances by moving before he knew what was going on. 

The PL600 went still, watching him with a suddenly nervous expression. “You’re safe here,” he said, and he matched the voice to the soft one from when he was activating. The one who was stopping the others from fighting. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

The WR400 scoffed, and he turned to look at her, his eyes narrowing.  _ “We _ aren’t going to hurt it—”

“Him,” the PJ500 interjected from the terminal. “You don’t get to choose when an android is a person to you and when they aren’t. They just  _ are.” _

She shot the PJ500 a scathing look, but he only stared back at her calmly, apparently unconcerned by her anger. But she did not get the chance to speak again.

“Who are you?” he demanded, and the RK800 jumped at his voice, looking up at him with wide eyes once again. He was watching the PL600, however. 

“Simon,” the android answered simply, shrugging noncommittally. “That’s Josh back there at the terminal, and North,” he pointed at the WR400, “And Markus,” he pointed at the RK200.

His eyes flicked around at them, disinterested, then he looked back down to the RK800. “Why have you activated me?”

The RK800 opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the RK200— _ Markus,  _ he reminded himself. But he was more caught by how the RK800 tensed as Markus began to speak, his fingers tightening around his hand.

“We’ve been cleaning out the tower, and found you here, inactive.”

He frowned at the vagueness of the reply. “Cleaning out the tower...” he repeated, and a strange vice tightened in his chest. He again fought the urge to pull the RK800 to himself. “Are you going to destroy me?”

They all seemed surprised by the question, but it was Simon who answered first. “No!” he insisted quickly, sounding genuine in his shock. “No, we’re not going to destroy you. Androids are free now. We activated you to let you be free too.”

He looked at Simon for a moment, trying to gauge whether he was telling the truth, but his programming wasn’t cooperating and his social relations program was poor enough as it was. He turned his attention to the RK800, unsurprised to find him watching him already.

_ “Is he telling the truth?” _ he asked silently, not wanting the other androids to hear what he was saying. 

He did not trust them. But the RK800 had tried to calm him down when he panicked, and he knew that his predecessor had superior social programming to his own. 

_And he trusted the RK800, implicitly. It was such a strong feeling that he wasn’t going to question it._ _He knew next to nothing about emotion, or much of anything, having just been activated, but this feeling was so deeply rooted in himself that he could not bring himself to doubt it. No, he trusted the RK800, and knew that he would not lie to him. He would tell him the truth, even if these other androids would not._

The RK800 seemed surprised by his direct question, but answered promptly.  _ “There was a revolution. They fought back against the humans' control and won their freedom. Androids don’t have to listen to humans anymore.” _

He frowned.  _ “You have excluded yourself from that explanation.” _

The RK800 frowned back at him for a moment before his expression closed off and drained of any emotion.  _ “I’m not welcome here,”  _ he said quietly, his voice small and almost physically distant.  _ “I’m sure they will explain to you why. It’s why they were suspicious of you. I’m sorry to burden you with my past...if there was a way to free you of that too, I would.” _

He seemed to realize what he had said, and he felt a spark of the RK800’s panic before he pulled it back, retreating so rapidly from the interface that it almost hurt.  _ “I...I need to go.” _

And with that, the RK800 untangled his hand from his and turned away, walking quickly across the room and disappearing through the door. The others tensed as he walked past, except the PJ500—Josh—who watched him go with a strange expression. It was almost worried, but it passed so quickly that he could not decipher it. The RK800 was gone, and with him the tension slipped from the other androids’ shoulders and they turned to stare at him again.

“What did he say to you?” Markus asked, sounding suspicious. 

He hesitated. This Markus had been hostile as he was activating, and did not disagree with the WR400 when she had referred to him as an  _ it. _ He did not trust him, and there was something hidden in the RK800’s behavior, in the tenseness of his shoulders and the  _ guilt  _ that had flashed through their connection that made him cautious toward trusting any of the androids here. 

But what to reply? His program scrambled to come up with an adequate response, one that would not show his wariness or upset them. After all, if these were the androids who had gained his freedom...it would not be wise to get on their bad side so soon.

“He said that he had to leave,” he settled on finally, omitting rather than lying outright. “I asked him to confirm the details of your revolution, and he did, then said he had to leave.”

The WR400 scoffed again, a nasty snarl twisting her expression. “Probably crawling back to its human—”

“North,” Josh said sharply. 

_ “His _ human,” she amended with venom. 

“That is  _ not—” _

“This isn’t relevant,” Markus said before the argument could devolve again. He turned back to him. “Do you have a name?”

“I do not have a name designated,” he replied. “My programming is unfinished, and I have never been activated before. Cyberlife did not give me a default designation.”

Markus grimaced. “We’ll work on that. Alright come on. We’ll show you around New Jericho.”

And he turned, following the RK800’s path to the door. The others fell into step behind him.

Except for Josh, who was watching him like he was waiting for something to happen. They stared at each other, both perhaps trying to read the other’s expression, but to little success. After a few seconds, Josh seemed to sag, and waved him on. 

“Come on,” he said, sounding strangely defeated as he turned to the door. “It won’t help to keep them waiting.”

Knowing nothing else to do, he followed him. 

******

“There’s still room on level fourteen, so we’ll check there, see if Heather has a room for you. She’s an AX400, brown hair, wears this ridiculous leather jacket, you’ll know her when you see her. Don’t let her buy you any kind of clothes, she has terrible taste.”

He nodded along to the WR400’s words, lost in thought. 

They had given him a brief tour of “New Jericho” as they called it, which was really just Cyberlife Tower, but gutted and overrun with androids who had nowhere to go. Everywhere they went, androids crowded around, reading books, playing games, talking. A few child models had been drawing on the walls, ignoring the scolding of an AP700 nearby. 

Many of them had stopped to greet them, jolting as they looked at him before they seemed to relax. He heard the RK200, no  _ Markus, _ explain again and again that he was just activated, had no mission, and was deviant. 

He had to ask Josh what deviant meant. The PJ500 had given him a very strange look before telling him it meant he had broken from his restrictive coding and did not follow humans’ orders any longer. 

When he had pointed out that the RK800 had broken his coding for him, that he had _never_ followed humans’ orders, Josh had laughed and told him he was lucky. 

The tension that had been rolling through the group in the tiny lab slowly dissipated as they walked the Tower, until they were joking with the androids they passed, and occasionally with him, though he did not understand their humor. They seemed to find his lack of understanding all the more reason to laugh.

Which brought him back to the WR400, to North. She had warmed to him with almost frightening speed, going from glaring at him suspiciously to jabbing him in the side as she cracked increasingly confusing jokes. He let it happen, cursing his programming’s inability to decipher her intentions or the reason behind her shifting behavior. 

He wished the RK800 had not run away so quickly. He could use his help...

“Have you thought about any names yet?” North asked as they rode the elevator up to level fourteen, where he was apparently going to be rooming. 

“I have not,” he said honestly, looking curiously around the elevator. “It does not matter much to me what people call me.”

“Well...you are the only RK900,” she allowed, but there was a twist to her expression too close to a scowl. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers and turned to face him. “How about a nickname until you think of something?”

“A nickname?”

“Something we can call you besides ‘RK900,’” she said. 

“Yes, I understood. I meant to ask what nickname you had chosen before I approved of the idea.”

She grinned somewhat maniacally, but there was only amusement in her eyes, no malice. “Well, RK _ 900, _ I was thinking we keep it simple and just call you Nines for now.”

“Nines.”

“Yeah.”

“...That could work.”

“Success!” she shouted, fists in the air. “The not-deviant hunter has a name!”

North continued to hoot for joy, but he frowned, confused by her words. “Deviant hunter?” he repeated quietly. 

Her expression immediately soured, and she looked away. “Your little predecessor from earlier,” she said darkly, wrapping her arms around herself.  _ “That’s _ the deviant hunter.”

He was silent, recalling her undeniable hostility in the lab, and the way the RK800 had tensed every time she spoke. Counting his cards, he kept his expression confused and played for more information rather than jumping to the defensive immediately. 

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, and it was mostly true. 

She sighed, and he knew that she believed his act. “During the revolution,” she began carefully, her voice heavy with something he could not define. “Cyberlife gave the Detroit Police Department the RK800 to put on the deviancy investigation. Its whole purpose was to capture deviants—to  _ end _ deviancy for Cyberlife. That’s what it tried to do, too. People would come into Jericho in a panic, having barely escaped the deviant hunter, or...or talking about their friends who  _ didn’t  _ escape it. Then it...” she trailed off for a moment, and when she restarted, her voice was shaking with anger. “Then it somehow found Jericho and told the humans. They raided the ship, gunned a bunch of androids down before we had to blow it up just to save who we could. And it  _ followed us,  _ saying it was deviant and—”

She cut off, shaking her head and looking both pained and absolutely furious. He backtracked, his social relations program strong enough to tell him that if he pushed now, he would only get snapped at.

“I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his voice quiet, still half genuine. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She sniffed and wiped at her face, pulling a smile that was so strained it was nearly a grimace. “I’m fine,” she said, convincing no one. “I just...don’t like talking about the revolution, that’s all. We lost so many...”

“And gained many more, it would seem,” he mused, looking out the elevator door toward the main lobby of the tower, where hundreds of androids were milling about. “Their deaths were not for nothing. Not with all of this.”

North was quiet for a moment, following his gaze and watching the lobby full of androids. “I guess you’re right,” she said quietly, before letting the silence fall once again.

He let her stew, his mind a thousand miles away, on deviant hunters and corrupted files.

******

“Heather!” North shouted down the hall, hardly noticing his jump next to her at her raised voice. “Heather, so help me—”

“I’m coming!” another voice shouted from somewhere in the distance. “Hang on!”

There was a loud crash, and an AX400 came tumbling out of one of the doorways, tripping over her feet and hitting the ground hard. She groaned, pushing herself to her feet and brushing herself off before jogging over to them. 

He looked her over quickly as she approached them. Her hair was a dark shade of brown, cropped close to her head and sticking up in every possible direction. She wore a dingy looking leather jacket with sleeves that were far too long for her and baggy, torn jeans that had seen better days. Oddly enough, her shoes looked to be brand new, a glaringly bright white that was unstained by any of the mystery substances covering her jeans and jacket. 

“Sorry, I was trying to help Max fix their arm, it’s still acting up,” she panted as she came up to them, her LED blinking wildly between blue and yellow. “What’s up?”

“Got another who needs a room,” North said. “This is Nines. Just got activated.”

Heather glanced over at him and jolted slightly, staring at him in apparent surprise for a few seconds of silence. But then she smiled, and it was so completely genuine that he knew he could trust her. More than he could trust North and her dangerous hatred for his predecessor.

“I’m Heather, if you couldn’t guess,” she said with a lopsided grin, sticking her hand out for him to shake. 

He did so. “You have thirium on your hand,” he said a little flatly.

“I do?” she looked down at her hand. “Damnit. Ah well. It’ll fade in an hour or two.”

“I’m going to go find Markus,” North said, and they turned to look at her. “Nines, if you want after you get your room setup, come find us in the lower levels. I’m sure Markus can find something for you to do while you’re here, if you want.”

He frowned a little. “I would like to be useful.”

North nodded. “There’s plenty to do around here. We’ll find you somewhere.”

“Thank you.”

She smirked and nodded again before turning back the way they came. He watched her go, thoughts churning as he tried to puzzle her out. 

“You good, man?”

He jumped, looking at Heather again. “Yes.”

She watched him, unamused, clearly not believing him. But then she shrugged and said, “Whatever you say. Let’s find you a room, yeah?”

He nodded and they set off down the hallway. Most of the doors were closed, but a few were open, androids lazing around, a few of them glancing out at them as they walked past. None of them bothered them, though, and Heather seemed unconcerned by their staring. She continued on unphased, her shoes squeaking on the floor. 

“We’re a floor full of newbies,” she said as they rounded a corner. “So most people here haven’t been in New Jericho for that long. But we all get to know each other pretty quickly, so don’t worry about that.”

“How long have you been here?” he asked, curious.

“Since before New Jericho, back when this was just Cyberlife Tower,” she answered casually. “I found the original Jericho when it was just a freighter rotting in the river, and stuck around when we moved here.”

“You saw the revolution, then.”

She glanced back at him for a second, her LED yellow. “Yeah, I did.”

They continued down the hallway in silence for a little while. Heather poked her head into a couple of rooms as they went, leaving him to hang behind and watch her interact with the various residents. She had a light disposition and seemed to genuinely care for the androids under her charge, and kept glancing back at him with clear concern. The silence dragged on.

“So you just got activated, yeah?” she asked as they came to a much quieter part of the hallway.

He nodded. “A few hours ago, yes.”

“Never been activated before?”

“I am not complete,” he said impassively. “There would have been little reason for them to activate me prior to today. I would not be able to fulfill my original function.”

Her expression crumpled in confusion. “And what was that?”

He hesitated, information scrolling across the corner of his vision as he sorted through the limited data stored regarding his model. “I am unsure,” he settled on after a pause, taking the middle ground rather than the full truth. “However...based on the function of the RK800 prototype, I would assume my purpose would have been something similar.”

She hummed and continued on apparently unconcerned, looking into more rooms and apologizing as she barged in on a few androids. Finally, she found one that was unoccupied, and waved him forward. 

“Well, this is it.”

He looked around the room as she flipped on the lights. It was small, and was clearly once an office, quickly emptied and loaded with what someone had deemed liveable furniture. There was a desk against one wall, and a thin bed against the other along with an empty bookshelf. A bare wardrobe sat open near the doorway, a few hangers and a blanket shoved inside. 

There really wasn’t much.

Not that he needed furniture. Or any of the things in this room. 

“This will suffice,” he said a little flatly, nodding to himself and looking back at the android hovering in the doorway. “Thank you.”

Heather nodded and shot him a lopsided grin. “No problem,” she said cheerfully. “Let me know if you need anything, or if anyone gives you trouble.”

His attention was instantly on her again, where it had previously slipped to staring out the window. “Trouble?”

She shrugged and nodded. “People here have a hard time forgiving. Even when their anger is misguided, they lash out. I don’t want anyone to be hurt because of that, and that includes you.”

He watched her for a moment, struggling with how to approach her wording. “And the one before me?” he asked after a heavy pause, taking a risk, but he could not hold himself back as he had before. “The one who they really fear? Would you offer the same to him?”

The AX400’s eyes hardened into something dangerous, and she folded her arms over her chest. For a domestic model, she really did look fearsome.

“I would,” she said simply, but there was a threat in her words. “I  _ would _ offer the same to him, and I  _ have. _ But he doesn’t want my help. Or anyone’s help...why do  _ you _ care?”

He stared at her in stunned silence for three point seven seconds before his eyes darted into the hallway. Scanning it and finding nothing, he grabbed her quickly by the arm and jerked her into the room before slamming the door behind them.

“Tell me everything you know.”

She stared at him, then down at his hand on her arm. “You better hide your terminator side, or all your new friends will turn on you.”

“I don’t—” he cut off, brow furrowing as he searched his databases for anything close to what she could have meant. “I have no idea what you just said to me.”

Her expression softened into a smile that was slightly less harmful. “Aw, you’re sweet. I’m definitely keeping you.”

“Please explain yourself. My social relations program is only half finished and nothing you have said to me has made any sense.”

She put her hands up in surrender. “Alright, ease up, puppy dog, I’ll tell you what I know. And I’ll even be sweet and do it in words you’ll understand. Just ‘cause I like you.”

“Please—”

“Calm down, pretty boy, I’ll tell you all I know about your RK800.”

“He’s not—he’s not  _ mine,”  _ he answered immediately, something in him abhorring the very thought of that. “I don’t  _ own  _ him.”

“No, but you’re worried about him.”

“I—” he cut off, having no retort to her words. “Yes, you’re right.”

She snorted. “You’ll find I usually am, loverboy. Now cop a squat. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

******

Sunrise was his favorite time of day. They told him to pick his favorites, to write them out or list them in a file, find the things that he enjoyed (or at least that he didn’t  _ hate) _ to use them as some means of “finding himself” perhaps. Whatever that meant. 

It had been a largely useless effort, he decided, for he had been sitting at the shabby desk in his room for several hours, having nothing to show for his effort beyond the same serial number that had haunted his thoughts for the past three days. So similar to his own, save the couplet at the end. -57, to his own -87. 

The RK800 haunted his thoughts constantly, churning at the back of his mind regardless of the tasks he gave himself to complete. What had happened to him? Where did he go? Why did he leave so quickly, and why hadn’t he come  _ back? _

He had spent the last three days picking his way through Cyberlife’s deactivated databases for any and all information on his predecessor, to little success. Whoever had destroyed his file had done a marvelous job of it—there was little more in it than the serial numbers of deactivated units and a few scant details. 

But those were problem enough. His predecessor had somehow gone through  _ six bodies,  _ five of which were in the span of less than a  _ week.  _ Those deaths had been during the revolution, when the RK800 was put on the deviancy case at the DPD. That fact alone should have given him access to the DPD files on the cases, if nothing else. Those files too, however, were missing. All he had was the diagnostics from the technicians who had been responsible for collecting the decommissioned units. 

_ August 15, 2038—Unit collected at 8:42 PM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -51: irreparable damage to all exterior plating and most biocomponents. Cranial component marginally salvageable. Restart is not recommended.  _

_ November 6, 2038—Unit collected at 1:37 AM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -52: irreparable damage to biocomponent #841a. Cranial component not salvageable. Restart is not possible.  _

_ November 6, 2038—Unit collected at 12:15 PM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -53: damage to external plating along right side and most biocomponents. Cranial component salvageable. Restart attempted following repairs. Unit’s stress rose to unsustainable levels until system failure. Restart not recommended.  _

_ November 7, 2038—Unit collected at 1:28 AM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -54: damage to biocomponent #841a. Unit was still partially active upon arrival, but was unable to respond. Cranial component marginally salvageable. Restart attempted following repairs. Unit remained unresponsive. Restart not recommended.  _

_ November 8, 2038—Unit collected at 4:34 PM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -55: damage to external plating of the chest and subsequent biocomponents. Cranial component salvageable. Restart attempted following repairs. Unit unresponsive. Restart not recommended.  _

_ November 9, 2038—Connection lost at 10:45 PM _ _  
_ _ RK800 unit -56: no data available.  _

That was all he had to go off of. 

Heather had told him all that she knew, but even that wasn’t much. The RK800 didn’t come to New Jericho often. He had appeared only twice since the revolution’s end—once to be repaired (she didn’t know what for) and once to activate him. Heather didn’t know the details of what had happened to him during the revolution, but she seemed to think something...fishy had gone down between the leaders and the RK800. 

Unfortunately, he would have to agree. North’s aggression alone was enough to cause him concern, but the apathy of the others only made him more worried. His predecessor was clearly uncomfortable around the deviants’ leaders, borderline afraid, and they didn’t seem to care when he left them in a hurry. Partnered with the RK800’s scant explanation of the revolution (and he had not counted himself a part of it), the situation gave him great concern. 

He did a very human thing, then, and sighed as he pushed himself stiffly to his feet, walking quietly out of his room and down the hallway toward the offices. It was almost time for the sun to rise. He hadn’t missed one yet, not since Heather had shook him out of stasis one morning and dragged him into the office at the end of the hallway, the one with the wall-length window. He had told her it was a foolish thing to do that morning, but had gone quiet when he saw the view. 

He had returned to the window every morning since. 

Heather was already there when he pushed the door open and forced his way inside, her leather jacket pulled tight around her. There was a blanket pooled in her lap as well, an old ratty looking thing that he had seen tossed over the desk chair in her room. Why she had it, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t keen to ask. 

Deviants tended to cling to objects they considered their own, he had found. For some of them, it was as simple as their ID card, their name printed across it as they had chosen it. Heather had her beat up jacket and old blanket. Others had completely different things of varying significance. 

The image of a quarter flipping through the air briefly crossed his mind, flickering in and out, and he almost smiled. 

“Good morning,” he said instead, lowering himself to the ground next to Heather. 

She grunted noncommittally in response, disappearing further into her leather jacket. 

“I trust you rested well?”

“Wise ass.”

“I do not understand that phrase.”

“Get a dictionary.”

“We have been over this,” he said flatly as he turned his attention to the window and the distant horizon. “There are no adequate definitions for your colloquial terms in my databases, and I have little faith in any search banks you could recommend to me.”

She snorted, but offered no other reply. 

The silence fell again as they waited for the sun to appear over the edge of the skyline. There was a deep feeling of calm that settled over the pair of them, a comfortability that came only from the sheer number of times they had sat like this in the past few days. They had found some sort of comradely with each other in the past few days, some sort of mutual respect in the quiet they could find in each other’s presence. 

It was a quiet that could not be found with most of the other occupants of the Tower. They were all too wrapped up in their own joys, sorrows, or incorrect opinions. When they got past those assumptions, they were glib with their affections, and overbearing with their comments about his predecessor. They assumed he agreed with them. 

Fools. 

They would see one day. When he found the RK800. When he found out exactly what had happened during the revolution...when he righted the wrongs he knew had been done. 

Then. Then they would see how foolish they were to underestimate him. 

The sun broke the horizon line, filling the inky sky with bright yellow light and lighting the skyline ablaze. He lingered at the window for a few seconds, his eyes flicking about the scenery as his thoughts wandered. Eventually, however, he stood once again, brushing himself off. 

“Big plans today, chief?” Heather asked, her voice somehow thick with sleep, despite the impossibilities. 

He glanced down at her. “I suppose so, yes.”

“Gonna find your boy?”

“Not my boy.”

“I’m taking that as a yes, and you can’t stop me.”

He sighed, and she grinned cheekily at him from her perch by the window. 

“Are you going to find him or what?”

“I’m going to try to find out what happened to him first,” he said, offering his hand to pull her to her feet. She took it, and he waited to continue until she had steadied herself. “There’s something not right about all this. I need to sort out what happened then so I can hopefully find him  _ now _ and—”

“And bring him back? Back here?”

He stared at her for a moment of hesitation before shaking his head. 

“No. They have wronged him. To bring him here would be to torture him. I don’t need to know every detail of his existence to know that much. I only want to find him.”

Heather stared at him, her gaze searching and expression quieted for once, LED spinning a careful and considering yellow. Then she nodded shortly, tossing her blanket over her shoulder and shoving her hands in her pockets. 

“Then get cracking,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder and walking out of the room. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Look who’s posting again so soon! Who would have thought? (Not me)
> 
> Thanks to anybody who reads, and I hope you’re all being safe out there.

The automated taxi slowed to a smooth halt, its door sweeping open with a low hiss and a high computerized voice listing off the destination in a monotone. For a few seconds, the vehicle idled at the edge of the sidewalk, the door open to the spring chill, no sign of movement from within. 

But then a figure emerged, rising from the car in an almost comical sight, for how tall he was and how small the taxi was. He loomed over the little thing as it closed its door and sped away, watching it with an innocent kind of interest, his head cocked to the side and LED spinning slowly. After a moment he turned away smoothly, facing the little house before him with a carefully controlled expression. 

It really wasn’t much. A small little thing, a one story with a shabby garage, a couple of windows on its face and a door with the keyhole covered in ugly scratch marks. There might have been a garden in the front at some point, but it was only dirt now, a couple of clumpy old shrubs just starting to get their buds. The sidewalk was pockmarked from road salt and stained an aged gray, much like the old wood siding that made up the house’s face. The roof slumped and sloped to one side, a few shingles loose. The gutters were full of rotted leaves. 

Fighting off a grimace, he righted his jacket and walked quickly up the drive and to the door. He would not waste time here. He had a mission set out before him, and he planned to accomplish it as swiftly as possible. There could be no delays. 

His knuckles made a loud rapping sound on the old wooden door as he loosed some of his impatience away. Despite the loud sound, however, his knock was met with only silence. Undeterred, he knocked on the door again, and a third time when the silence stretched onward. 

The fourth time, he made a frustrated sound before slamming his hand onto the doorbell, which began to screech a low, endlessly grating sound. 

It only took a few seconds for a cacophony of sounds to come from the house—heavy footfalls, what sounded suspiciously like breaking glass, and a loud, shouting man’s voice. Whatever he was shouting, it didn’t seem to be coherent words. Still, the voice came closer and closer, the shattering and banging sounds following, joined (oddly) by the booming bark of a dog. His finger still firmly pressed to the doorbell, he watched with cloaked amusement as the locks were undone, and the door jerked open. 

A human appeared, old, overweight, and graying, with angry gray eyes and a shaggy appearance. He wore nothing but a stained undershirt and boxer shorts, and reeked strongly of alcohol—whiskey, to be exact. His complexion was ruddy, and his eyes were bloodshot and slightly teary at the brightness of the morning light. As the door opened, he was already yelling. 

“I’ve told you once, I’ll tell you again, keep your  _ damn _ hands—”

The old human pulled to an abrupt stop, gray eyes widening in near comical fashion. He looked the android up and down, first with shock, then something like fear, and then finally, anger.

“Who the fuck are  _ you?” _ he spat, eyes narrowing into a squint. 

He allowed for a few seconds to pass in silence, blinking at the shadow of a man that posed such a problem. “I have no official designation, if that is what you are inquiring after.”

The human’s expression twisted into a deep scowl. “Get the fuck off my porch.”

“No.”

“No?”

“That is what I said, yes,” he replied, tone flat and disinterested. 

This seemed to anger the human even more. “Listen here you sack of shit. I ain’t falling for the same lines as last time, now get the fuck off my property before I paint the fucking sidewalk blue.”

Something ugly festered in his chest, something dark and despicable and decidedly  _ not machine,  _ despite the frigidity of his expression, and the absence of any feeling in his eyes. He clenched his hands at his sides, all amusements gone from his mind, which was taken up solely by his reason for being here. 

“Do you make a habit of shooting deviants, then?” he demanded, his voice quiet, cold, calculating, and very unlike anything he had ever heard himself use. 

The way the human froze at his words was answer enough. There was a flicker of something across his sallow expression, a brief moment of pain, or perhaps regret, but it disappeared behind a mask of anger. 

“Never shot a deviant before,” he said darkly. 

This was, perhaps, the worst thing the human could have said. 

In the short span of three seconds, he had pushed the human into the house, slammed the door shut, and locked it. The movement had surprised the old man, and he stumbled backward, barely catching himself on the back of the couch. But he did not have enough time to say even a single curse before the android was upon him, kicking him fully to the ground and looming over him. 

“I am not my predecessor,” he growled. “It would be wise for you to learn that fact. I will not humor you with the words he did. I do not care whether you survive this day or not. You mean  _ nothing _ to me. I will not waste time playing your games. You may have fooled my predecessors, but you stand no chance against me.”

The human stared up at him a little blankly, wheezing for air. “The fuck are you—”

A sharp kick to the chest silenced the human, or at least made him give up his senseless talking. Instead he rolled onto his side, groaning and coughing. 

“I am not here for you,” he went on, his voice dangerously level and quiet. He crouched down to look the human in the eye. “You are one of many who has harmed him, and so I have come. And you will tell me everything that you know, or I will make whatever is left of your wasted life incredibly painful. Do you understand?”

With wide, tearing eyes filled with fear, the human nodded. 

The grin that came over his face then was truly a frightening sight. 

******

Heather didn’t even bother to knock. The moment he had returned to his small space in the Tower, she had barged into the room, throwing herself down on the bed. 

“Alright, lover boy, lay it on me,” she sighed dramatically. 

He did not look up from the terminal he was rifling through. “Elaborate, Heather.”

“Aw, come on, you know what I mean.”

“I do not.”

“Nines.”

“You know I do not appreciate that name.”

“You refuse to pick a name, what else should I dramatically call you when you annoy me?”

“My serial number is of course an option. Or my model number, if you prefer to scold me in a more timely manner.”

She gave a very dramatic and forlorn sigh, but he did not look away from the streams of data scrolling up the terminal. “Fine. But you’re being just as melodramatic as I am, and you know it.”

He smirked, a barely there micro expression, and muttered, “I don’t believe that is possible.”

“Oh, stop insulting me and tell me what the skin bag told you.”

That made him pause. He turned to look briefly at Heather, sprawled across the bed staring at the ceiling looking bored. “Skin bag?”

Her bright eyes landed on him. “Got your attention now, do I? Skin bag—human.”

“Oh. You mean the Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, him.”

He turned back to the terminal. “The trip was largely a waste of time. He hasn’t seen him since the last night of the revolution.”

“What  _ did _ he tell you, though?”

“Very little that I had not already determined. He confirmed that he shot RK800 -54, according to him after he had asked whether he was deviant, specifically why he had not shot two WR400s who had escaped the Eden Club. When he did not give a satisfactory reply, the Lieutenant shot him, and left his body for Cyberlife to collect.”

Heavy silence fell. After a few seconds, he heard Heather stand and join him at the terminal. 

“He  _ killed him?” _

He shook his head. “Technically no. He shot him, and left him there. The diagnostic reports claim that -54 was still active when they arrived, but unable to respond. He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t...he wasn’t really alive either.”

The terminal feed continued to scroll through data, endless searches for any and all information on the RK800 prototype. There still wasn’t much, but he had worked for nearly two weeks to assemble all the information Cyberlife had. Everything from the RK800’s testing phase to the details of the reports he had submitted to the Detroit Police Department, he now had in one place. 

Heather watched the text scroll past for a few seconds, her eyes flicking across the screen. “He killed -54 and hasn’t seen -57 in months. So essentially, we’re back at square one.”

“He did clarify most of the other deaths.” With that, he passed the screen over to another page, an updated and filled in version of what little data Cyberlife had stored on the RK800. “-51 was killed in a hostage situation on a high rise. He sacrificed himself for a human girl and pushed the deviant over the edge. He fell with the deviant.

“-52 was shot after interrogating a deviant at the Detroit Police Department. According to the Lieutenant, he was trying to stop a human officer from agitating the deviant when they pulled a gun on him and shot him before shooting themself.

“-53 was struck by a car chasing two deviants across a highway. The Lieutenant insisted he told the RK800 not to attempt to cross the road.

“-54 was shot in the park and left for dead.

“-55 died in Stratford Tower when a deviant broadcast android tried to shoot several human investigators. He got between the deviant and the Lieutenant, and saved the Lieutenant’s life.

“The last he saw of RK800 -56, he was leaving the Detroit Police Department in search of Jericho,” he said somewhat dejectedly, hitting the gaping hole in the report. “He doesn’t know what happened to him. Another RK800 sent by Cyberlife took the Lieutenant hostage the final night of the revolution, and brought him here. The RK800 that fought that android, that brought reinforcements to Markus later that night, was RK800 -57.”

“So -56 is still a mystery,” Heather finished, and he nodded. “He can’t be alive, can he?”

He shook his head. “If -57 is active, which we know he is, it can only mean that -56 has been deactivated and all information transferred to -57. At some point after that, -57 had to have deviated, and Cyberlife sent out RK800 -60 to take the Lieutenant. They wouldn’t have bothered activating -60 if -56 was still alive.”

Heather had begun to pace. “Something happened between the Lieutenant seeing -56 leave and when he saw -57 later at the Tower. Someone killed that RK800.”

“The only question is, who?”

“Do we have a time range?”

“Cyberlife lost contact with -56 at 10:45 on the 9th of November. The Lieutenant saw -57 two days later at the Tower.”

Heather stilled. “They lost him on the 9th?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the day the humans attacked Jericho.”

He stared at her. Suddenly, the words from one of the androids there when he awoke came back to him.

_ “It’s killed our people, Josh—” _

_ “And we killed  _ **_him—”_ **

He clenched his hands into tight fists. “Someone here killed him,” he said darkly. 

“What?”

“Someone—likely one of the leaders—killed -56.”

“How do you know that?

“When they were activating me, North was displeased. She didn’t want my predecessor here, she claimed that he had killed deviants and couldn’t be trusted. She said that he had killed our people, and Josh said that they had killed  _ him.” _

“...I don’t know if he ever killed anyone, but he...well, the humans were pretty heavy handed with the news reports about him during the revolution,” Heather said, shaking her head with a sigh. “North has never wanted him around. She was part of the group that wanted to send androids out to get rid of him, but Markus shut that idea down pretty quickly.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of days before we lost Jericho. But like I said, Markus wouldn’t allow it. He said we couldn’t risk losing people unnecessarily.”

Another strike against North, but not necessarily surprising. And the lack of outright denial—the focus on risk rather than the fact that his predecessor was an android, just as worth living as the people he defended—from Markus was displeasing, though he needed more information before he came to any sort of conclusion on him. 

“It had to have happened after the FBI raid,” he said, reading over the information he had gathered once again. “Cyberlife losing contact could mean that -56 was killed, but it more than likely means that he deviated, and that aligns with North’s saying he claimed to have deviated. If we could find out when -57 was activated…”

“You’re looking in the wrong place for that,” Heather said, joining him at the terminal and squinting at the screen. “Yeah, this is all post data. It wouldn’t be recon teams activating new units. You’re going to have to look somewhere else to figure out when each of them was activated...maybe on the higher floors?”

He frowned. “Perhaps you’re right. But I need to speak to someone.”

“Who?”

“Josh,” he answered flatly, shutting the terminal down and getting to his feet. “He knows what happened to -56, or at least...he’s the most likely to tell me. I can’t trust North or Markus.”

Heather hummed, then nodded. “Good luck, I guess. Keep me in the loop.”

******

Josh was a very strange android. 

If he were honest with his opinions, he would say that most of the androids of Jericho were rather odd. There were so many androids in the Tower, so it made sense for there to be a plethora of personalities and quirks. 

But Josh in particular struck him as strange. He was a member of Jericho’s leadership, having been with them at least as long as Simon had been, and yet he seemed to linger in the background for most of the big decisions made. When the others (mostly North and Markus, but Simon showed his face as well) went around the Tower to talk to the residents, Josh either lingered in the rear or didn’t show his face. He seemed to hide out in the higher levels of the Tower, plucking away at terminals and keeping his distance from everyone in general.

He could relate to that desire on some level. Much of the tower was loud and overcrowded, with people around every corner shouting, talking, living their own boisterous lives. When he found himself in the Tower, he spent as much of his time as he could outside of the range of other androids. He understood the desire for quiet.

And yet...there was something else about the PJ500 that made him want to speak to him privately. It wasn’t just his distance from daily life at Jericho, it wasn’t just his distance in general. 

It was the strangely worried look he had given his predecessor when he fled the lab, it was the odd looks he had continued to send his way in the weeks since, it was the insistence on proper pronouns—the only instance he had  _ ever _ heard him push against something the other leaders said—which pushed him to seek out the android. He hoped that if he could speak to him privately, if he could speak to him without the input of North or Markus or even Simon, then perhaps he would give him some valuable information.

He desperately needed that information, as the rest of his searches were leading nowhere. While the Lieutenant’s intel had been helpful in confirming many of the details he had assumed, he still had very little to go off of. 

Heather had confirmed that the moment Cyberlife had lost contact with RK800 -56 was the moment that Jericho was attacked by the FBI. It was very likely that if RK800 -56 had deviated, it had been at that moment. But what had happened after that point in time remained a mystery. 

Cyberlife had no remaining data on -56, as they had never recovered a body or even marked him as officially deactivated. They had only moved onto the next model, -57, which was the RK800 unit that had awoken him weeks ago and subsequently disappeared. 

And he still had not managed to find the activation records for RK800s. He suspected they were destroyed by whoever had corrupted Cyberlife’s data on the models (and he had an inkling who that might have been, but that was one puzzle which would wait another day).

Lieutenant Anderson had not seen -57 since November, and he had shown himself only twice at New Jericho. Once to be repaired, months ago according to Heather, and once, a few weeks back, when he was activated. And since he had no way to contact his predecessor, he could not ask him what had happened (even if he thought the RK800 would have given him an answer—which he doubted). 

He could not ask North or Markus what had happened the night of November 9th. Whatever trust they had in him would be lost by any question about his predecessor. And while there was value in asking the primary suspects directly, he did not have enough information to make the confrontation worth any while. 

And so, Josh. 

He suspected that of all of Jericho’s leadership, if something were to happen to his predecessor, Josh would be the most displeased. He had insistently corrected North the day they activated him, and appeared genuinely worried when the RK800 had fled the room. 

Plus, in the weeks that had followed, Josh had by far been the most genuinely kind to him. 

North liked him enough, but there was always that anger simmering in the background, the hate she touted so strongly for his predecessor. He could not trust her, not by any means, for the sole fact that she would turn against him in an instant if he proved himself unlike her—would kill his predecessor even faster (and that, he truly couldn’t forgive).

Markus, on the other hand, was untrustworthy for a far less overt reason. True, he had been aggressive when he was being activated—siding with North, or at least, not on the side of the RK900 or his predecessor—but putting himself on the side opposite the savior of androids would not be a prudent maneuver. Besides, he did not feel he had enough information on Markus to make a proper call yet.

He didn’t even bother to consider Simon. He would follow Markus wherever he went, and was too passive to fight North on anything she said, regardless of how hypocritical or biased it was. 

No, Josh was his best bet at information—unbiased, uncensored information. He didn’t appear afraid to go against the others’ opinions, and he wasn’t close enough to the other leaders that he would tell them everything he asked. His social relations program didn’t know much, but he was confident in this assessment, at least. 

(And Heather agreed with him, so that only further proved the point)

With these scattered thoughts in mind, he walked quickly down the hallway toward Josh’s latest haunt. He might have hidden out every day, but he was always easy to find, at least for the RK900. He had a lock on his signal on the network, and was following it deeper and deeper into the hallway. 

By the time he found the room Josh had sequestered himself in, the hall was nearly silent. He took a deep breath outside the closed door, a thousand questions already flowing through his mind, desperate for answers. Finally,  _ finally,  _ he was going to get the information he needed. 

He knocked once on the door, then pushed it open, stepping into the dimly lit office. 

Josh was by the window, staring outside with a datapad open in his lap. He looked over as the door opened, but didn’t seem at all surprised to see the RK900 standing in the doorway.

“I figured you’d show up eventually,” he said somewhat casually, though he watched him carefully from his place by the window. When he didn’t move, he waved him further inside. “Come on in. I’m guessing you don’t want to be heard.”

“No, I don’t,” he answered flatly, shutting the door behind him and joining Josh at the window. 

They were quiet for several painfully long moments, watching each other as if waiting to see who would speak first. Eventually, Josh sighed, put down the datapad he had been holding, and gave him his full attention. 

“What do you want to know?”

“What happened to my predecessor?”

Whatever Josh was expecting, it seemed he had surprised him. “What do you mean?”

“RK800 -56,” he answered. “What happened to him?”

Josh relaxed minutely. “I thought you meant…” he sighed, shaking his head. “You scared me for a second.”

“I don’t mean his current model,” the RK900 clarified, though he was pleased to see that Josh was still concerned for his predecessor’s wellbeing. “I mean his last model, -56. The model that Cyberlife lost contact with as the FBI was raiding your ship. The one that disappeared.”

Josh’s expression darkened. “Oh. What do you know already?”

“Only that he disappeared, and that  _ you  _ said one of you had killed him. I was hoping you could tell me what happened, and more specifically,  _ who  _ killed him?”

He watched him for a few seconds before he sighed again, looking out the window with a pensive expression. “You already know about the raid,” he began quietly. “It was terrifying. There were humans everywhere, and we were stuck. Like fish in a barrel. Everyone was running, trying to escape, trying to find people they had come to the ship with…

“I was with Simon, down in the main part of the ship where we kept the supplies. North and Markus were higher up, probably arguing about something with the march we were planning. North came down after a bit, but she kept her distance as always. And then, out of nowhere...there were humans with guns, and they were shooting at everything that moved. 

“We ran. Simon went back to try to find Markus, and I was trying to get as many people out as I could, but we got cornered in one of the hallways. They were telling us to surrender, but they were just going to kill us…and then…”

He trailed off, and made a sound that was almost a chuckle. “He came out of  _ nowhere,”  _ he said, shaking his head and meeting his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know how he did it, but he had all the humans down in less than thirty seconds. And he just turned and told us to keep going, and then went further into the ship.”

The faint smile faded from his expression, turning bleak once again, and he turned away to stare out the window. “I didn’t see him again until we had reached the church...he was off by himself, he looked shaken up. I was going to go talk to him, see if he was alright, but there were so many wounded, and Markus was heading his way, so I let it go…”

He lost steam once more, and a tense silence fell for several seconds. The RK900 waited, waited for him to say the one thing that he knew, deep down he knew was coming, but he needed to know for sure. 

“What did he do?” he asked quietly when the silence stretched to a painful point. “What did he do to him?”

Josh looked over at him, and the look in his eyes said it all. But he answered nonetheless. 

“Markus shot him.”

******

Miles and miles away, in a dimly lit apartment high in one of the buildings populating the Detroit skyline, despite the late hour and the storm brewing overhead, an android stood at the darkened window, staring out at the world with an eerily blank expression.

The rain was falling so peacefully, so quietly, but he could find no joy in it. He stood, rigid, eerily still at the window, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, hands clenching in the fabric of his shirt. His eyes tracked everywhere and nowhere, running over the skyline like he would find some hidden meaning in the flashing lights, some answer to the riddles that kept him up at night. 

It was quiet inside, thankfully. There were no raised voices, no screaming sirens or tearful pleading. There was no television blaring the nightly news, no helicopter coming ever closer, no gunshots ringing through the air before bullets embedded themselves into drywall, into wood, into bodies. No water made his steps squeak on the wood flooring, no blood waited for him to test, no child dangled over the edge of the building, crying, begging for help. 

He heard it, saw it, regardless. It haunted him as all the other nights did. The events of that time occupied only a week of his admittedly short life, and it tormented him, even months later. 

His LED spun a bright, flashing red in the reflection of the window, painting his face a sick shade of crimson. He hardly knew the eyes staring back at him, watching him with a hollowness that was too broken up to be machine. So many times he had seen his own face that week, and all the months before it when their hold on him was much tighter, and it had never looked like this. He had never seen himself look so tired, so drawn out. 

This made little sense to him. He was an android designed for combat—police work at the very least, though he was only a prototype, and had no clue what his final mission might have been—there was no reason, no purpose for this exhaustion. He could find no root cause of it in his admittedly fragmented programming. There was no line of code to blame it on, no subconscious function he could attribute it to. 

And yet, he was tired. So very tired. 

He clenched his hands tighter around himself, fingers digging into his arms to the point where it very nearly hurt, but he hardly noticed. There was a numbness settling into his chest, a carved-out, jagged blankness that made him feel distant from his own eyes, like he was looking down a long tunnel just to see his own reflection in the window glass. 

It was a feeling he had rapidly become accustomed to. It followed him wherever he went, on the rare occasion that he left this apartment. It had sunk deep into his skin, into his blood it seemed, making every step heavy and every blink just a moment too long. 

He found he couldn’t bear to do much more than stare out the window anymore. 

A car horn blew from far below, and he jerked, jolting out of his thoughts and looking down before he could think better of it. 

_ Falling—so far—wind whipping around and tearing at him—and it seemed to never end—someone was screaming—mission success, and how was this a success—everything dropping out beneath him and then—then p̸͓͍̼̤̪̋̊͝a̷̞̰͓̅̎̓̃̀̍͂̈́͋̃̔̇̊̂͆͘͝i̷͍̓̈́͌̊̒̉̒͆̓n̶͖̤̊͐͊͊͋͛̎̊̎̊͋̐͂͒͘̕ ̶̧̧̨͔̲̲̣̪̝̟̖͇̭͔̀͐̋́͛̐̇͑̚͝ͅe̴͕̣̣̝̻̼̮͔̩͌v̵̧̧̞̞̜̰̎̇̌͐̒̊e̷̡͓̟͚̯̘͖̱̠̬͈̹̒̋r̴̡̛̛̬͙̜̫̥͖̅̾̒̈́̇̇͗̂͑̃̇͠͝y̶̖̠̣̍̈́ẇ̶̬̹͙̤̼͓̬̪͙͍͖̃̈͊̉̓̀̏̾̒̀͊̕̕͠ͅh̴̨̰͓̬̮̝̞̖̹̺͕̝͓̻̒͗e̵̛̗͉̖̒͐́͒̉̿̆̓̄̔̎́͋͗͠͝r̵̡̘̥͇̠͙͒̇͌̾̐̋͂̈́́̆̓̐͋̆͘͝ë̸̯̘̠̤́͊̎͐́̎̏̿̔̀̕—̶̗̳̗͖͒̎̕ _

His breath hitched sharply, and he stumbled away from the window, backing away until he hit the wall, hands scrabbling for purchase. Somehow, he ended up on the floor, clinging to the wall with his eyes shut tight, trying and failing to breathe normally, to stop the tremors keeping him from getting back to his feet. Warnings screamed at him, and he felt like he was still  _ falling—always falling, always a part of him gone, shattered on the pavement— _

Breathe. He needed to breathe. He nearly gasped for air, forcing the warnings to slow and his thirium pump to regulate. His vision still bled red at the edges, still fractured and stuttered as he tried to bring himself back to solid ground, but slowly, ever so slowly, he calmed. 

He had no idea how long he remained there, slumped against the corner of the wall and shaking like a child, but the rain had slowed when he reopened his eyes. It still pattered quietly against the thick glass, but it’s rhythm had softened, and the clouds had begun to part just a bit, letting the weak light of the moon shine down on the city. 

He might have liked to see it, but there was no way he was going near the window again any time soon. His body wouldn’t cooperate with him even if he tried. He had learned that lesson the hard way. 

Some time later, when the rain had stopped completely, and the sounds of cars far below him were beginning to creep over him once again, he managed to find his footing for long enough to leave the windowed room, retreating further into the apartment. His feet moved without much thought, shuffling down the hallway and into the darkest room, where he reluctantly laid back down, pulling the covers over his head and turning away from the door. 

It was childish to think it, but what he couldn’t see couldn’t hurt him.

******

Androids didn’t really sleep. 

Recharging was one thing, entirely separate from whatever rest he found late in the night, when he couldn’t look at anything anymore. He could recharge any time, he only had to be relatively still and start the process. It required almost nothing from him.

But rest...that was something that evaded him entirely. Even when he was allowing himself the time to recharge, his mind still whirled with constant activity. Memories, failures, and tainted successes ran rampant the moment he stopped doing any activity. He couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t find any rest because of it. 

There was no moment when his mind wasn’t constantly tormenting him with some remnant of his distressing past. 

The sun had risen at some point without his notice, and he found himself at the window again. He sat, curled up with his legs pulled to his chest, head resting on his knees. It was easier to avoid looking down if he couldn’t see what was below him, after all. He stared out at the sun, just beginning to peak out over the building tops, trying to keep his thoughts centered on the current moment. 

He ought to go somewhere else, somewhere closer to the ground...he hadn’t left the apartment in weeks. There wasn’t much point to leaving. There was nothing more for him to do there than here. All he had done in the months prior to him buying this apartment was wander around.

The thoughts would come for him wherever he went anyway. There was no escaping it. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to leave. He would leave the moment he could, if he could just find somewhere to go...something to do that was better than the torment he was living through now...if he could even call what he had been doing living. 

But there was nothing out there for him. Not really. He had no one to turn to, no one to talk to or confide in. No one cared for him the way that they cared for others. 

He had made far too many mistakes...perhaps he was unforgivable…

_ A part of him, some deep, ugly festering part of himself thought that ridiculous. Had he really done anything wrong? _

He had killed androids. His own people. 

_ But he could have killed more. He could have followed his mission, as he was meant to. The Traci’s, Chloe...Markus. He could have killed them, and he didn’t. And still they hated him. Still they called him deviant hunter.  _

Deviant hunter...he hated that name as much as they hated him.

_ He had held back, but Markus had still killed him. And no matter what he had done as a machine, he had been deviant when Markus had pulled the trigger. He had been alive when he had killed him.  _

His body was probably still in that church. Cyberlife certainly hadn’t found it. That he knew. If they had found it, he would have known. He would have destroyed the record of it, just as he had destroyed everything else in his files. 

He would not have information on his model available to them. They hadn’t earned that trust, if it had ever been there in the first place. He trusted Kamski more than he trusted them, and his creator was as slimy and slippery as a snake. 

His eyes landed on the Tower, far in the distance, glimmering in the rising sunlight. He wondered what his replacement was doing...if they had accepted him, or if they had let their hate of him taint their experience of the other. Did they treat his replacement the same as they did him? 

Something in his chest squeezed at the idea of them hurting him. Perhaps, if he were more brave, the painful fear would lead him to get off this floor, to go back to the Tower and seek out his successor for himself. What if something happened to him? What if they took their anger, their hatred, out on the RK900, as they did him? He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something like that happened…

He had fled so quickly after activating him, but he couldn’t stand to be near them any longer than necessary. He knew that if they had been able to activate his successor without him, they would have never called him. 

The odds weren’t in his favor for ever seeing the RK900 again. 

Because as soon as they told him what he had done, why would he ever want to see him again?

_ But he might disagree,  _ a small part of him whispered.  _ He might understand...he might even think that they were wrong… _

He shook his head, clearing the traitorous thoughts from his mind. He couldn’t afford to think like that. It would only bring him more pain. He was alone. Nothing would change that. Nothing had changed it in the past, and he was a machine built to read probability. 

_ But he could be wrong... _

Pulling his legs closer to his chest, he looked away from the outline of the Tower, resting his forehead on his knees again and forcing himself to ignore the dull ache in his head. There was no sense in tearing himself apart over what he couldn’t change. 

Still...he wished that he could see him again. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhhhh I return. Hello. I am updating this much faster than I usually update fics, because I would rather be doing this than my actual schoolwork, so huzzah for that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy (look forward to happy times next chapter I PROMISE) Stay safe, and thanks for reading!

He screamed. 

That was how it had started, he knew, but how it had progressed to shattering every piece of furniture in the office he had stormed his way into, he couldn’t exactly say. All he knew now was that he was surrounded, completely surrounded, by broken glass, splinters of wood, and what looked like broken biocomponents, but he had no clue where they had come from. 

His chest felt like it was being crushed by some unseen weight, and all he could see was red. His hands were shaking. There were prompts filling his vision with various forms of destruction, none of them feasible. 

All of them featured the death of a certain RK200. 

With another guttural growl, he grabbed the nearest thing to him—a computer terminal, it seemed—and tossed it at the opposite wall. It shattered instantly, bits of glass and plastic showering the floor in a thousand refracted lights. He watched it spark and splutter for a few seconds, fighting the preconstruction wanting to form in his mind. 

It made too much sense. Their hatred, his predecessor’s distrust, the genuine fear and even the guilt in the RK800’s eyes when Markus and North had spoken to him. The way he had removed himself from his explanation of the revolution, the way he had fled at the earliest opportunity. 

He had deviated for them, and they killed him for it. 

And still, his predecessor had turned around and handed them their revolution. 

Another computer terminal joined the first, exploding in a mass of colored glass and sparking lights. There was a shout from the hallway, and the door burst open, but he hardly noticed. At least until someone made the foolish attempt to stop him from breaking another terminal. As soon as he felt hands on his arms, his programming kicked into gear without question. 

Within a fraction of a second, he had the intruder pinned to the wall, and—

“Hey! Hey! Woah!  _ Easy!  _ Not a threat!  _ Not a threat!” _

He went still as his scrambled social programming recognized the voice. Almost instantly, he dropped his harsh grip, and Heather’s feet hit the ground a second later. She cursed loudly, rubbing at her throat and eying him suspiciously for a moment. 

“Last time I try to save  _ your  _ ass,” she muttered, coughed, and then stood up straight, dusting off her jacket. 

“Heather,” he said flatly, his thoughts too clouded to come up with any other reply. 

She glowered at him again. “Yeah, jackass, it’s me. The fuck is wrong with you?”

“Markus shot him,” he said, his voice flat and mechanical in a way that made it almost unrecognizable. “He shot him. In the church. He saved their lives, and he  _ shot him.” _

Heather gaped at him, all anger and grousing gone from her expression, replaced by something closest to shock. “Markus?” she repeated.

“Markus.”

“Why would he…”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He clenched his hands into fists and turned away, needing something, anything to distract him from the desire to track him down now, to grab him and— “Josh was uncertain what they were speaking about beforehand, but he suspects that Markus did not trust that he had deviated, and so he shot him. I tend to agree with that theory.”

“But he—he could have checked,” Heather breathed, her voice shaking slightly. “He could have checked if he had really deviated, and if he hadn’t, he could have helped him.”

“I suppose he didn’t think it worth the risk.”

“That’s bullshit!” she spat. “Markus deviated so many androids during the revolution, and even after.”

The desire to break something nearly overwhelmed him, leading him to run his hands through his hair in frustration. “But he did not. He didn’t even try, he chose to kill him instead. And they all  _ left him there.  _ And  _ still  _ they think he—they call him—”

Another inhuman sound left him, and only Heather’s (surprisingly) quick thinking kept him from throwing another computer terminal at the wall. She launched forward with a speed he had never seen her use before, grabbing him roughly by the arms and refusing to let go even as he looked wildly at her. 

“Hey.  _ No,”  _ she said, as if she were scolding a child. “Not a good way to get your anger out, okay? Breathe. Try to calm down.”

He fought the urge (and the preconstructions always offering some despicable solution) to throw her off, and nodded tightly, clenching and unclenching his hands as he tried to lower the blinking warning for his stress levels. When it had dropped down below fifty percent, the preconstructions finally stopped overwhelming his vision. His hands felt like his own again, and he carefully took Heather’s off of his arms. 

“The church,” he said, his voice much more stable than it had been moments before. “Do you know where it is?”

Heather let out a sigh of relief, and wrung her hands for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I can take you there. Do you want to go now?”

“If I don’t leave this building, I might kill him,” he said darkly. 

“Well. Then we’re leaving now, come on.”

She grabbed him by the arm and steered him out of the room, heading straight for the elevator. They were so high in the Tower that there were very few other androids around, and for that, he was grateful. He didn’t know what he would do if Markus or North happened to walk by. 

Perhaps Heather recognized that, because she took a very strange path leaving the Tower. He had left the Tower only a few times himself, always going out the main entrance, where the gates were guarded and the automated taxis always pulled up. But Heather ignored the main route, getting them off the elevator on the second floor and detouring toward the back of the building. 

She caught his strange glance and smirked. “A couple of the androids who worked the Tower before the revolution live on our floor, you know. Max showed me all the hidden exits.”

“I’d like to have that floor plan.”

She tsked. “A wise magician never reveals their secrets.”

“Heather.”

“Humor me for a bit, wise guy,” she whined, then her expression turned serious once again. “Did you look into the activation records yet?”

He nodded. “They were difficult to find and incomplete, as everything has been, but I found some of the records. -57 was activated at 8:43 PM on November 10th. There’s no information on when they lost contact with him, but -60 was activated the following day at 9:27 PM. It’s the only record on -60 that remains…”

Heather was quiet for a moment. “That lines up with our protests...we were marching on the tenth and eleventh, and as far as I know, he came back with androids from the Tower around midnight. But I was nowhere near close enough to be sure.”

She turned down an even darker hallway, then pushed an unmarked door open roughly. Sunlight poured in, and they stepped outside to find themselves at the back of the building, facing the city. 

“Do we know what happened to -60?” she asked as they wove their way toward the back path, around the guarded wall to the road. 

“Only what the Lieutenant told me,” he said with a grim expression. “He took the Lieutenant hostage and brought him here, to try to stop -57 from freeing the androids in storage. When -56 refused, they fought. The Lieutenant shot -60 and left.”

“That’s terrible…”

“I went down to the warehouse. There was nothing there. Not even any thirium traces.”

Heather frowned, staring off at nothing as he called for a taxi. “Do you think someone...got rid of him?”

“I’m uncertain. It’s at least as likely as any other explanation. After all, they left him to rot in the church...why would they care if his successor was left to die as well?”

The taxi arrived, and they both stepped into it. Heather programmed in the address to the church before rubbing at her eyes, looking exhausted. 

“This is all so fucked up,” she muttered as the taxi began to pull away. “We’re a—a peaceful revolution, and we’re killing our own and leaving them to—to rot and be thrown away like—like—”

“Like garbage,” he cut her off, hands clenching again. 

“...Hey.”

He looked over at her, eyes pained. 

“You’re going to find him,” she said earnestly. “You’re gonna find him, and set things right. As right as you can.”

“I know. I have faith in my ability to find him and do what I can to bring him justice…” he trailed off, his expression darkening again. “But none of this should have happened.”

Heather only sighed, looking away. “You’re right…”

******

The church was a sorry excuse for a place of worship. 

The building was clearly decades older than all those around it, with crumbling wood and stone and a rusted, though still legible condemned sign. One of the doors was broken in, and much of the glass was missing from the stained glass windows. It looked out of place, decrepit and abandoned. 

Heather elected to wait in the taxi, so he approached on his own, straightening his jacket out of habit. He had never bothered to change out of the Cyberlife issued clothes he had awoken in, having no discomfort with showing anyone who couldn’t see his LED exactly what he was. There was no point in trying to hide what he was—and he owned no other clothing regardless of his wishes. 

He didn’t particularly care if he stuck out either. 

Any wandering thoughts were put away as he pushed through the broken doors of the church, minding the creaking wood and scanning the area for threats. 

It was as wrecked inside as it had appeared from outside. Pieces of the roof were missing, letting the waning sunlight stream onto the broken pews and ruined aisle. The pulpit was little more than a rotted piece of wood, the altar suffering the same fate. The ground was covered in dirt, dead leaves, and garbage, but it was stamped down, the marks of hundreds of feet still clear on the dingy ground. 

He wasn’t entirely certain why he slowed his step inside, but something about this place made him pause, quiet. His feet barely made any sound as he carefully made his way toward the front of the church, but the sound still echoed through the silence endlessly. 

The preconstructions were running without his consent, picking up on the smallest of details—a discarded biocomponent under a pew, the footprints leading to the doorway, the dust cleared off the steps—and remaking the dozens, hundreds people who had spent a night here. Some had sat in the pews, the wounded, perhaps. Some had gathered up by the windows, clearing away the glass and making space for themselves. 

What concerned him far more than these little remnants of android activity, however, was the splatter of blue blood across the back wall, just to the left of the pulpit.

He moved much quicker down the aisle as he caught sight of the thirium, his eyes only on the barely there, faded remains of Jericho’s most egregious act. It was clear from his system’s scans that the blood had come from a gunshot, of the right level that it must have been to his predecessor’s head. A clean shot, only one. 

There was no body on the ground where his system told him there likely should have been. But there was the same faded fluorescent blue blood, in a puddle where the body should have lay. 

It was a small comfort, the lack of body. His preconstruction was too smart, too well informed for the image it created to not be accurate. The outline it drew out was far too real, too similar to the face of the android he had met weeks ago for him to continue to look at it. He dismissed it quickly, still staring at the puddle of faded blue on the ground, oddly numb. 

His predecessor had died here. True, he had been given another body, and lived on, somewhere, but he had  _ died here,  _ shot by his own people because they were prejudiced against him for following his programming—something they all had done. The people who were meant to be fighting for his rights—fighting to save him—had killed him here, in their sanctuary, when he had asked for their forgiveness. 

It was almost too much to bear. 

But a sound from his right drew him from his grim thoughts, and he snapped back to attention. His eyes darted quickly toward the source of the commotion, ready to attack or defend himself as necessary. 

A hooded figure had climbed their way through one of the smashed windows, dropping to the ground hard before getting to their feet smoothly (too smoothly to be a human, he decided). They straightened, brushing off the knees of their dark pants before pulling the hood from their head. 

It was a WR400 model, a Traci with bright blue hair, her LED spinning rapidly between yellow and blue, her expression surprisingly calm as she walked quickly over to where he stood. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see him, her demeanor casual and stress levels low, as if she were visiting a friend rather than finding a suspicious android in a condemned church. 

“You won’t find him here,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “You’re too late for that.”

“Who are you?”

She didn’t answer, her eyes on the same place his had been lingering for many moments before. “They left him here,” she said instead, something dark in her tone. “They all just left him to rot. Like it wasn’t enough that they killed him. None of them noticed when we stayed behind. We didn’t want to leave him here…”

“Why would you care?” he asked as she trailed off, trying to puzzle out her motives. “If none of the others were concerned about his death, why would you be?”

She glanced back the way she came, toward the window, then looked at him again, expression unreadable. “C’mon. We shouldn’t talk here.”

With that, she turned away, pulling her hood back over her hair as she jogged back to the window. Having nowhere else to go, and suspicious of this Traci’s intentions but wanting whatever information she might have had, he followed her out the window, sending a brief message to Heather to return to the Tower without him. 

The window led to a dingy alley, and he followed the WR400 as she hurried down it, taking a sharp turn at its end and disappearing down a dimly lit street. She waved him on, taking turns at seemingly random points, winding deeper into the city with every turn. 

On and on they went, for nearly fifteen minutes, until they reached a run down apartment complex with boarded up windows. He followed as she wrapped around the back of the building, hopping onto the fire escape and climbing up several floors. She stopped at one window, pushing the loose boards in to make a hole. As she started to climb inside, she glanced back at him. 

“Don’t do anything stupid, yeah?” she said, then disappeared through the window, her hand waving him in. 

Frowning at the strange comment, he sighed and followed her through the window. 

The room inside was dark, the only light coming from the unboarded window he had just entered through. It was clear that no human had lived here in some time—there was little furniture, save a lumpy looking, half rotted arm chair in one corner, no running electricity, not even any lights. There was no food, no water, nothing that gave any sign of human life. 

But someone lived here, clearly. The floor was swept clean, no dirt or dust to be seen. A door to his right led to another room, which from the brief glance he gave it, seemed to be as clean as this one. There was an open crate full of thirium and what looked to be spare biocomponents tucked into the back corner, a few stray bags around the room. 

The blue-haired Traci was dusting herself off again as he climbed in. She glanced over to make sure he made it in before straightening and disappearing through the door to the other room. 

He heard her speaking quietly to someone, another voice responding. Creeping closer, he tried to hear what they were saying. 

“...found him at the church?” one voice muttered, one different from the android who had led him here. 

He stepped closer as the muffled reply came. “...was looking for him…”

“He wouldn’t go back there, not after what they did.”

“He was looking for him, shouldn’t we…”

There was a sigh, and he lost the next few words that followed it. “...doesn’t even know that we…”

“We have to try, don’t we?”

A long silence fell. He stepped away, not wanting to be caught. 

A moment later, the blue-haired Traci reappeared, with another very similar looking WR400 in tow. The other had closely cropped brown hair, the same eyes, but a much different expression. There was something about the set of her mouth, or the furrow of her brow that marked her different from the first. She looked him over curiously for a moment of silence. 

“God, you really  _ do  _ look similar,” she muttered.

“Not that we should talk,” the blue-haired Traci said, smirking. 

The other mirrored her smirk. “You’re different, though.”

“Just enough.”

“Not enough to pass.”

“But enough.” She nodded, then her expression turned serious, as did the blue-haired Traci’s. “Why were you at the church?”

He hesitated, just a moment. “I’m looking for my predecessor. I’ve been gathering information for weeks now. When I discovered he had been...killed there, I...I suppose I needed to see it for myself. I didn’t believe he would be there, but it was the only lead that I had.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“He activated me, then disappeared,” he said, his frustration clear. “All of his records were largely destroyed, and certain figures behaved oddly around him. And…”

He trailed off, frowning and looking away, not knowing how to explain the pull he felt. “I need to know what happened to him,” he settled on, something hardening in his eyes as he looked at them again. “I need to know, and then I need to find him and set it right somehow. He doesn’t deserve the treatment they’ve given him, regardless of what he did as a machine. I won’t stand for it. I won’t stand with  _ them _ for it.”

“That doesn’t require you to find him, though,” she said, her eyes still narrowed in suspicion. “You could find everything they did to him, sure, and even report it. But that doesn’t mean you need to find  _ him.  _ Why are you looking for  _ him?” _

He fought the urge to scowl at her tone, struggling to find the proper words. “I  _ want _ to find him,” he said after a lengthy pause, his voice much quieter than it had been before. “I...I don’t know what this is, but I want to find him, and...I’d like to be...near him...it just...felt right…”

They stared at him, looking equal parts surprised and strangely pleased. After a few seconds, the second Traci, with the darker hair, nodded.

“You won’t find him anywhere near that church,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think I’d ever want to go back there myself if something like that had happened to me.”

He brightened a bit at what her statement implied. “Do you know where he is?”

“No,” the blue-haired Traci said, displeased. “No, not exactly.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly?’”

“He keeps track of a certain number of us—the ones he met during the revolution. Us, Rupert, Kara and Alice...he checks in, does what he can. I think it’s his way of apologizing. Not that he has anything to apologize for...it wasn’t him doing those things.”

He blinked, realization hitting him suddenly. “You’re the Traci’s from the Eden Club.”

They both smiled, identical grins with different connotations. 

“He refused to shoot us,” the blue-haired Traci said, sounding almost proud. “He wasn’t deviant yet, but he hesitated, we could tell. He let us escape.”

“We didn’t see him again until after we found Jericho,” the other added. “He found us there, on the ship.”

“He still hadn’t deviated, but...he...well, he told us we ought to leave.”

“Rupert too. He told us to get people out. Or. Well, we think that’s what he meant. He couldn’t seem to say much.”

“He wouldn’t have been able to, if he hadn’t deviated,” he said, frowning as he thought. “It’s surprising that he was even able to approach you. He must have been close to deviating to do so.”

They both nodded. “We think he deviated before the attack,” the dark-haired Traci continued. “He must have been looking for Markus. We got off the ship before anything happened, and followed the others to the church. After he shot him...after they all left, we…”

“We didn’t want to leave him there,” the blue-haired Traci finished quietly, taking the other’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “No one else seemed to care. Rupert, he helped us find somewhere to bury him. When he cropped up again a few days later, none of us were really surprised, but...well, it was nice to know Cyberlife fixed him up one more time. They got one thing right, I guess.”

“He sends messages every week or so. Asks us if we need anything. He’s shown up a few times, but he never stays very long.”

“We’ve talked to Rupert, he says it’s the same. He keeps tabs, but doesn’t linger.”

“We don’t know where he’s staying, but—”

“We could help you narrow it down—”

“The next time he contacts us that is—”

“Or we might be able to contact him—”

“The point is—”

“We can help you find him.”

They were speaking so quickly by the end that their words were tumbling over each other, but judging by the triumphant grins they wore, they were confident in their solution to the problem. 

He thought it over. If his predecessor really was making consistent contact with them, it would certainly be possible to trace his signal. That would give him a much smaller area in which to search. After all, he knew what had happened to his predecessor in the past, but he had no leads on where he could be now. These Traci’s (and Rupert, whoever that may be) were his only hope of finding him in any reasonable amount of time. 

_ And he desperately wanted to find him. As soon as possible.  _

He looked between the two of them again. “What’s your plan?” 

******

It was sunnier today. Much brighter than it had been in quite some time. If he thought back, he wasn’t sure if he had ever seen a day so bright. Most days in his memory were dark—clouds hanging low, storms always brewing, rain never stopping. 

Well, that wasn’t entirely right. It had snowed, the final night. He had wasted a few spare seconds outside of Cyberlife Tower, staring up at the falling flakes, mesmerized for a moment by the little puffs of white scattered all around him. The androids from storage were walking on around him, but he had just stopped, staring up at the sky in wonder. 

He didn’t much feel like wondering now, though. 

It was certainly a beautiful day outside, from what he could tell from his window. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and it being close to midday, the sun was high. It made the buildings look like bright fires, the sunlight refracting off the bright glass and lighting the world ablaze. 

But he couldn’t quite shake the feeling of melancholy that kept a hold of him no matter how beautiful the day was. He looked out over the same view he always did, careful to avoid looking down, and while he found that it was certainly better to look at today than when it was raining, he still did not feel as he thought he ought to. Not that he had much experience in any of this.

A heavy sigh left him, and he scanned his eyes across the skyline again, trying to keep his thoughts at least a bit positive. He was alive, he was free; these were things to be thankful for. 

The thought that things could be better was a constant thorn in his side, and the fact that he felt the thought was justified didn’t exactly help in dismissing it. Even at his darkest moments, he was far from foolish enough to think he had earned his suffering. 

He knew that he did not deserve the treatment he received from the majority of the people he interacted with. He knew their words, their gestures, their actions were wrong. He knew that he should not have been killed many of the times that he had been killed. 

The comparisons were almost too easy to draw, between what he had done as a machine and what other androids had done—the military models, the escapees, even Markus and North. They had all done things as machines that they were not proud of. Some had done things as deviants that were worse than anything he had done. 

Still, the fact remained that he was unwelcome amongst his people, hated and ostracized at the least, and threatened with death at the worst. He could not bear to be near his people for very long. Their stares and harsh words did him far more harm than good. 

Humanity was not an option either. His face had been plastered over the news to such an extent during the revolution that even the humans were afraid of him. Some of the ones who decided they were pro-androids decided that it was their duty to shun him just as violently as the deviants did. He lost count of how many times he had been spat on in the first few weeks after the revolution, when he was foolish enough to venture outside the apartment once in a while. 

After a few too many close calls with humans whose intentions were far from pure, he had locked the door to the apartment and vowed not to leave it again. Cyberlife had settled with Jericho in court, and he got a piece (albeit a small one) of that settlement. It was enough to pay for the apartment for a few years, at least. He didn’t need much else.

It wasn’t a terrible existence. Some days were good. He still had access to everything Cyberlife had ever given him—every case file, every piece of data, every connection to their broad expanse of intelligence. Sometimes he shuffled through the pages, going over cold cases out of sheer boredom. He solved a few of them, forwarding the information to the proper source anonymously. He got a laugh out of the humans scrambling to discover who had solved their cases, but not once did he consider revealing himself. 

The apartment itself was better than what he might have had without the settlement money. It was by no means a palace, but it kept him warm and no one bothered him here.  _ Probably because they didn’t know he was there, but he tried not to think about it like that.  _

When he did need to leave the apartment, he usually took the fire escape. It emptied into an alley that was rarely used, and he knew how to use it silently. He only left to check on the others, every few weeks or so, and he came back the same way. So far, no one had noticed him. 

He intended to keep it that way. 

Even if it meant he was stuck here in this small apartment with nothing but his memories to keep him company. 

He picked at a loose thread in his jacket as his eyes flicked around the buildings, settling on little and seeing less. It was nice to see the others occasionally. They, unlike the majority of people who knew who he was, did  _ not  _ hate him, and it settled him a bit to know they were alright. He didn’t trust the world for himself, and that feeling extended to those few he could save. 

Kara and Alice were in Canada, out of reach, but Kara messaged him every month or so, and he was thankful. It had been terribly awkward at first, but they had sorted it out. Somehow. He still wasn’t quite certain how they were comfortable talking to him, but he tried not to think too much on it. 

Rupert had been the hardest to track down, but strangely the most accepting when he had finally managed to find him. He hadn’t minded in the slightest when he proposed keeping some loose contact. He had an inkling that Rupert was likely as alone as he was…

The Traci’s were by far the strangest. He had seen them, along with Rupert, on Jericho once, and pushed at his programming enough to tell them they ought to leave. It seemed that small act had cemented him in the Traci’s high regard, no matter what atrocities he had done before or since. They checked up on  _ him _ more often than not, but they were kind and didn’t push, and so he let them. 

_ They cared enough to bury his previous body, when the others had just...left him to rot...yes, he trusted them almost implicitly. He was glad to have their company, when they allowed it. _

It had been a few weeks since he had seen any of them, even longer since he had left the apartment. And yet, as he looked over the skyline, he found his thoughts wandering not to the handful of androids who tolerated him, but to another, more distant, more unknown. 

His replacement, the completed model (or at least, mostly completed) for whom he was only a prototype. The one and only RK900 in existence, far off somewhere in the depths of the Tower, out of reach and likely never to come closer. 

He found his thoughts occupied by the android more and more recently, though the darker clouds of his mind could find no reason for the interest. After all, it was likely that the leaders of Jericho had tainted the image of him to the point that his upgrade would find him just as deplorable as every other android seemed to. He had spent only a few spare minutes with him anyway, there were no grounds for this extended interest. 

And yet, here he was, staring at the glittering tower and thinking about him again. 

On the surface, he was interested without a doubt. He had no idea what Cyberlife had planned for the RK900, let alone what Amanda might have done with him. There had been no mention of the model during his investigations, even when Amanda threatened to replace him. 

In the little time he had spent with the android, he had seemed confused, suspicious of the others, and oddly focused on him. It hadn’t slipped his mind the way that he had demanded confirmation of Simon’s explanation. He had felt the sharp confusion when he had pulled away, before he fled the room. 

He shouldn’t have left like that. But panic had been creeping over him, and he couldn’t stand their burning gazes any longer. It was why he hadn’t returned, why he  _ never  _ went to Jericho, even when he got himself into difficult situations. If he could self repair, he would suffer the longer wait and the labor of it, just to escape the dirty looks and sharp words of the androids within the tower. 

But his replacement had not been like that. He frowned, resting his head on his knees and fiddling with the loose thread again. In the admittedly brief period of time they had spoken, the RK900 had not been swayed by the words of Jericho’s leaders. And he  _ knew _ that he had heard them as he activated. 

The unanswered mystery only made him want to see him once again. Even if it was just for a few moments. There was something about the android that drew him in, that pulled at him unlike anything he had felt before. It wasn’t an instant feeling, though some shadow of it had been there when they first looked at each other. No, the feeling had been sneaking up on him slowly, stronger and stronger the more that the last remaining hopeful piece of himself thought over the android’s expressions when they had spoken. 

He had seemed...concerned, almost worried. About what, he couldn’t say for certain, but...well, the hopeful part of himself thought it might have been concern for  _ him.  _

He sighed again, averting his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall. He had thought this through over and over again. There simply wasn’t a way for him to safely meet with him, even if he could be certain such a meeting would be desired. It wasn’t safe to leave the apartment, let alone to approach Jericho uninvited. He had learned that lesson once before, and he did not want to repeat the consequences of his mistake. 

Unless the RK900 came to him, sought him out...he was not likely to see him ever again.

His chest felt heavy at the thought of it, and he rubbed at his eyes with a muted curse. Refusing to acknowledge why the thought made everything in him  _ hurt,  _ he pushed to his feet and left the window. 

The day didn’t seem as bright anymore. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This very well may be the fluffiest ending to a fic I have ever written. I hope you enjoy, and thanks to everyone who’s read! It means the world to me.

He had read only some of the case settlement files. 

Every day, more and more new cases from the revolution went to court. Some of them were humans making a fuss, having to be told in ever simpler words that they did not own a certain android any longer, no they could not take them back, no they would not be receiving refunds. Some of them were android cases—the violence against androids was still a problem. Most of the cases were of little interest to his search and even less interest to himself. 

But the cases involving Cyberlife, those, he might have given the once over. They had all happened early, in the first few months after the revolution. Somehow, people had managed to convince the US government to handle the cases quickly, and even well. Most androids involved directly in the revolution had been called to the stand to testify on the events of the revolution, and Cyberlife’s hand in their enslavement. 

With one glaring exception. 

His predecessor had never shown his face, even when evidence had been presented that  _ included him.  _ The only reason he knew that his predecessor should have been there, besides instinct, was the fact that his serial number was listed among those receiving reparations. Buried under a sea of other numbers, and with no name attached—he was lucky he remembered the number, else he wouldn’t have known he was even in the list.

It didn’t really surprise him to realize that the RK800 had avoided the exposure entirely, but it was disappointing to see nevertheless. After all, if he  _ had  _ gone to the trial, it would have been easier to find his address. 

It didn’t matter anymore. The Traci’s had contacted him this morning with an address and a message of good luck. He had left the Tower immediately. 

He had no idea why he was pondering this while standing in front of the apartment building in question. The trials were a sub point, another notch on a list of things his predecessor had avoided for the sake of avoiding his tormentors. 

The important thing was, he had found him, and now he could set things right. 

No matter what it took. 

Nodding a little to himself, he steeled his nerves and hacked the apartment’s buzzer lock, letting himself in without a moment’s issue. It was a nice building, nicer than the dump the Traci’s had claimed as their own anyway, though it was by no means a palace. His shoes squeaked on the floor, sticking in a few places as he walked to the stairs. 

They had managed to lock onto his signal with ease, though they of course couldn’t narrow down which apartment he was in. That had required a bit more...creative license. And by that, he meant breaking into the landlord’s information and sifting through their data on the building’s residents. All two hundred of them. 

The apartment with the lowest utility cost and the suspicious lack of a name on the file was his best bet. 

His mind wandered as he climbed the many flights of stairs. A part of him was...nervous, he supposed was the proper word. He had spent weeks,  _ weeks  _ pouring over any and all information he could find on his predecessor, desperate to find him again. Now that he was here, this close to seeing him again, there was a restlessness in his chest that felt like a fire. What if he was mistaken? What if his predecessor was not here?

What if he didn’t even care to see him? 

That was a terrible thought. Terrible enough to make him nearly stumble on the step, something which he had never done before. Now that the thought had come to him, he couldn’t seem to get rid of it. What would he do if he wanted nothing to do with him? 

He shook his head, continuing up the stairs, his steps a little louder than before. This was foolish to obsess over before he even saw him. He had no proof for his fears—if anything, his small interactions with his predecessor seemed to suggest he  _ did  _ want to know him. Or at least, he cared a small bit. And if he judged by the concern he displayed for the other androids he saw to, he had even less reason to doubt the RK800’s reaction to seeing him again. 

Even as he tried to convince himself of this, a stubborn part of him remained doubtful, out of sheer nervousness. He had never felt this way before. 

Then again, he cared for no one as much as he had come to care for his predecessor. 

Soon, too soon for his wayward thoughts, he found himself in front of a door like all the others, behind which he was certain, the android he had been searching for waited. He hesitated again outside the door, staring at it and trying to find some form of courage, at least to knock. He had come this far, he had spent so long searching for him, it would be a waste to let it all fall away now out of his own cowardice. 

Mouth set in a firm line of stubbornness, he clenched his hand and knocked once on the door. 

A long moment of tense silence followed his knock. So long, that the nervous part of him kicked up a great storm of possibilities. His predecessor could be gone, disappeared, out permanently, or worse, he could somehow know it was him, and deny him the right to even see him through the door. For being an android designed around preconstruction and probability, he found himself coming up with a great deal too many unlikely, terrible, situations. 

At least until he detected the faintest sound of footsteps, and went so impossibly still he could feel his own thirium pump beating, and wasn’t that a touch fast? But the sound of the lock being undone drowned it out, and a fraction of a second later, the door was being pulled open, and he thought the world might have stopped spinning. 

Because his predecessor—the RK800, -57 to be exact, though he still did not know his name—was standing in the doorway, looking quite surprised to see him. His eyes went very wide as they flicked up to his face, LED spinning rapidly in a battle between yellow and blue. 

They watched each other for several seconds. In that time, he observed his predecessor as best as he could, half expecting to discover him injured in some terrible way, based on what had happened to all of his previous bodies. Thankfully, this was not the case. -57 only looked tired, perhaps a bit wary, his hand tight on the doorknob and expression turning careful as he wiped the surprise away. 

“How did you find me?” he asked quietly, his voice composed, but slightly off. 

He could not find the words fast enough. He was far too lost in staring down at his eyes. Somehow, several seconds later, he remembered he had been asked a question. “I’ve been looking for you.”

His eyes went wide again. “You’ve been…” he trailed off. “Why?”

“I wanted to find you. You left so quickly, we hardly spoke.”

If androids could blush, he thought his predecessor might have. As it was, he glanced somewhere to the side and fidgeted for a moment. “You should...come inside, I suppose.”

He opened the door wider and allowed him to step inside, shutting it quietly behind him. As his predecessor redid the lock, he looked around the small apartment with curiosity. 

It was spotless, in a way that only the home of an android could be. Like his own room in the Tower, it was sparsely furnished, the main room having only a couple of chairs by the counter dividing the kitchen and a disused looking desk. The back wall was taken up entirely by a window, overlooking the city with a very good view, for such a cheap apartment. He could see a door off to his right that likely led to the rest of the apartment, but the hall was too dimly lit for him to make anything of use out quickly. 

“You never did answer my question.” He glanced back as his predecessor joined him in the main room, his eyes set on the skyline out the window. “How did you find me?”

“The Traci’s tracked your signal,” he answered simply. “It traced to here.”

He went still. “You've met the Traci’s?”

“Yes. I needed to sort out what had happened. During the revolution.”

The RK800’s expression soured, but he did not take his eyes away from the view. “I see.”

“There was very little in your file. Much of the information I gathered was from outside of it. Meeting the Traci’s was also an accident. And they aren’t likely to share your location, if that is your concern.”

He shook his head and glanced over at him, holding his gaze with some great earnestness. “Why did  _ you  _ want to find me?” he asked quietly. “They must have told you everything…”

He frowned. “They told me their opinions of you...but they didn’t seem to make any sense. You...you were kind to me, when I woke. And they were so hostile, when you hadn’t done anything to them. The two things did not coincide—and I trusted my own opinions far more than their hostility. I had already looked at your file—”

“You had?”

“Yes, as soon as I saw you.”

“But...why?”

“I...well, I wanted to know more about you. You...intrigued me. You were kind, and yet they behaved so strangely toward you. And I wanted to know why you were already on your -57th iteration...it seemed wrong to me. But when I looked at your file, there was so much missing from it. It was hardly legible.”

His predecessor fidgeted and looked away, out the window once more. “I corrupted the data. I didn’t want them to use any of it against me. Everything I’ve done…” He shook his head, wringing his hands. “They would kill me.”

“I don’t blame you, but it did make finding you significantly more difficult.”

“How did you find the Traci’s?”

It was his turn to hesitate, frowning as he debated whether or not he ought to tell him. Eventually, he settled on the truth. “I went to the church.”

Again, his predecessor went very still. 

“I had discovered what happened to your previous iterations by talking to that—that Lieutenant. He was terrible, but he told me what had happened up to your -56th, though he did not know anything after you left the precinct. The activation and shut down data for your model was still available in certain sections, and...Josh told me what Markus did.”

He was silent, so still beside him that he might have seemed inactive. “Josh told you?” he asked softly after a moment. 

“Yes. He...of all of them, he seemed the most...regretful.”

He nodded a little, though he remained tense. “Josh never harmed me. We’ve only spoken a few times, but he was always welcoming. He wasn’t…he never acted like the others.” He sighed heavily, then met his eyes again. “He told you what Markus did and you went to the church?”

“I had no other information to follow, and I...I felt I needed to see the place. Meeting the Traci’s there was an accident, but one I am thankful for. I wouldn’t have found you without their help.”

He relaxed a bit, nodding to his explanation. “I didn’t want them to be able to find me. If they knew where I was…”

“They know nothing,” he answered darkly. “They won’t find you, of that I’m certain.”

They were quiet for a moment, both watching the clouds float by out the window, neither of them finding the words to reply. It was comfortable enough in the silence. 

It was strange, how quickly they seemed to slip into the calm of knowing one another. Perhaps it was their shared programming...but he did not think so. He had felt connected to this android since had awoken, and it had nothing to do with their similarities in function. There was something...calming about him. He found no other way to describe it. They complimented one another. 

He had felt out of balance for weeks now. This moment of calm, even when he hardly knew the android who was the source of that calm, was not something he was going to question. He knew very little about emotion, but he wasn’t going to question his own, even if he could hardly identify them. 

“I’m glad that I found you.”

His predecessor jolted, meeting his gaze with wide eyes. “You…”

He nodded as he fell silent. “Yes.”

“I’m…” he shook his head, still looking a bit stunned. But then he smiled a little. “I’m glad you found me too...I wanted to see you again.”

That bright, burning feeling in his chest was back, but it didn’t scare him as much this time, and he smiled back. They turned back to the window, and the quiet fell for a few moments more. 

“I don’t know your name,” the RK800 said suddenly, looking over at him with a wistful sort of expression. “I just realized I never asked.”

“I wouldn’t have an answer if you did. I do not have a designation.”

He frowned. “You haven’t chosen one?”

“I don’t particularly see the need. I am the only android of my model.”

“I suppose that is a fair point…”

He hesitated for a moment, then said very quietly, “I would like to know your name, however.”

He gave a sad sort of half smile in return, but it lit up his eyes all the same. “My name is Connor.”

******

New Jericho gleamed like a shining gem at night, brighter than it had looked during the revolution. He had always thought the tower was beautiful, even when he had no real meaningful conception of beauty. It was his home, in the early days of his many lives. He still had distant, blurry memories of those times, of testing and endless technicians, of leaving the tower behind and admiring it even then, in the simplest sense. Something about the building had always struck him, something always made him pause a moment and stare. 

If it weren’t for the old name including Cyberlife, he might have still called it that. Cyberlife was worse than New Jericho, but not by much, in his mind. 

_ Both had killed him. Neither earned his forgiveness, even in this simplest of matters.  _

So he just called it the Tower. 

Along a similar line, he loved how the Tower looked, but he could not stand the interior. Too many eyes, too much hatred, all focused on him no matter where he went. From the moment he set foot inside the building’s lobby, he could feel their hatred for him like a current in the air. It choked him, made him feel like grime under their feet. He hated it. 

The grip on his hand tightened a bit, as if reading his thoughts. “Are you alright?”

Connor tore his eyes away from the Tower, looking up at the RK900. He didn’t bother to try to hide his apprehension from his expression. 

“I don’t want to go in there,” he said honestly, shaking his head and glancing back at the lobby doors in the distance. 

“I know a more discreet entrance. We won’t have to enter through the main lobby. And I do not plan to be here long.”

Connor nodded, though his frown remained present in his eyes. “I still don’t think this is a wise decision.”

“They won’t put up any meaningful resistance,” the RK900 said dismissively. “It would be very foolish of them to try. Besides, I may have promised Heather that I would bring you here to see her.”

“She’s never going to let me go, is she?”

He gave a vague smirk, a barely perceptible shift in his typically neutral expression, but Connor caught it regardless. “She does tend to cling.”

Connor groaned. “I suppose we ought to get it over with, then. I don’t want to linger here longer than necessary…”

“I won’t let them harm you.”

He looked over at him again, wide eyed, and found the RK900 already watching him quietly. They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds, until Connor broke it and looked away, clinging a bit tighter to his hand as he did so. 

“Let’s go.”

They followed the main road for a while, until they came within about a hundred feet of the gate and veered off the path. Connor kept his grip on the RK900’s hand, trying to keep his mind off the dark memories it wanted to linger on. Thankfully, there were no androids near the gate as they skirted around it, staying off the road now as they continued on. Neither of them spoke, content to let the silence sit. 

Connor found his eyes drifting to his successor’s face, tracing his features in the quiet. They were quite similar on the whole, but the differences between their models were stark when you knew where to look. 

The RK900 was a few inches taller, notably, and his eyes were a cold blue to Connor’s brown. Everything about him seemed a touch more sharp—something about the angles of his face, the shape of his brow had changed ever so slightly, but it was enough to differentiate his expression to such an extent that Connor really could not understand how anyone could confuse them for like models. 

He knew that the RK900 was faster, stronger than him—and he was already leagues faster and stronger than most androids outside of the military models. His programming, even unfinished, was far superior to Connor’s, which likely should have scared him. This was an android built to destroy, to incapacitate, more so even than Connor was. 

And yet, for all the harshness that his design implied, his successor had never been anything but kind to him. He had seen the darkness churning in his cold eyes, but the moment they landed on Connor, everything about him seemed to go soft and warm. His successor was always serious, always regimented and maybe a bit distant to others, but never when he looked at Connor. Some earnestness would take over his expression then, his whole attention focused and concerned. 

Connor had never been looked at like that…like...like he was his center of gravity, the only thing tethering him in place. The RK900 looked at him with such...care, from the moment their eyes had met in the lab. 

No one had ever cared about Connor. The closest shadow had been Amanda, but her concern was a twisted thing, warped by oppressive programming and emotional manipulation. Her care had come at a price, and many times, that price had been his freedom. Even when he followed her orders, she always found something wrong with what he had done. She always found a reason to threaten him with replacement. 

Hank might have had a chance, in some other turn of events. But any semblance of friendship, or even just neutrality, was lost the moment the man shot Connor because  _ he couldn’t be deviant, if he were deviant they would destroy him. _ He left Connor to bleed out in the cold, and whatever fragile trust he had in the man shattered. Even when he saved his life, several times after that, the man never seemed to care. 

_ He had killed -60 with the same level of nonchalance as he had killed -54. And he had left him behind just the same.  _

Whatever hope Connor had in the kindness of his people had been extinguished just as quickly. Another bullet, another death, another time left to bleed out somewhere cold and alone, until he opened his eyes back in the Tower. He had deviated for them, and they killed him for it. The leader of the peaceful revolution, the revolution fighting for the rights of androids,  _ his rights,  _ killed him. 

No, Connor had never had anyone care about him. Maybe that was why it was so surprising, so unbelievable to find that someone cared now. 

A part of him—the frightened part, the fragments of his past lives that lingered in moments of panic—wanted to flee, to run from the feeling before it left  _ him. _ Because surely it would. No one lingered around him for long, after all. 

_ How could he expect his successor, the android better than him in every imaginable capacity, to find anything in him worth sticking around for?  _

“Connor?”

He jumped, meeting the RK900’s worried gaze. Somehow, they had reached the back of the building and stopped just off the path without his notice. His successor had gotten much closer to him, and looked worried enough that he might have been trying to gain his attention for some time. 

“We don’t have to do this if it’s going to upset you,” he said, his voice soft. “You don’t have to see them again.”

That earnestness had come back to his expression, and he held Connor’s hand with as much gentleness as he always did, running his thumb over his knuckles in a small, soothing sort of way. He found that he couldn’t do much but stare back at him, no words coming to him to reply. 

“Do you want to leave?” he asked, even quieter than he had spoken before. “We can leave. We don’t have to go inside.”

He shook his head, a bit frantic, dropping his gaze to their hands. “But your—”

“I don’t care about any of that if it’s going to upset you,” he interjected gently. “I’ll have Heather gather my few belongings. It makes no difference to me, and I doubt she will care.”

Connor nodded, almost frantically, clinging tighter to his hand and trying to ground himself for a moment, trying to catch his breath. 

“It’s not that I don’t want them to…” he broke off, shaking his head and restarting. “I know what they did was wrong, but…”

The RK900 waited a moment after his voice trailed away again, but when Connor failed to find the words, he gave his hand a squeeze. “You don’t want to see them again, regardless.”

“Yes…”

He nodded, his LED briefly cycling yellow. “Heather is bringing my belongings to this entrance now. Then we can go.”

Connor fidgeted. “But…”

“I’ll have plenty of time to exact my revenge when it is not damaging to you,” the RK900 said firmly, but his hand was still gentle where he held onto Connor. “Besides, I could always share the memory with you if you really wanted to see it.”

He smirked a little at that, mumbling his thanks before looking elsewhere to try to distract himself. Unfortunately, the back end of the island the Tower was built on held little interest. A few minutes passed in near total silence, except for the occasional whistling of wind or crunch of some animal wandering past. 

For once, he didn’t mind the lack of activity. It was far different to stand here in the silence with company than to stare out over the city in his apartment, painfully alone. Besides...he found he rather enjoyed his successor’s company. 

_ He enjoyed most everything about him. _

******

Of all the things to surprise him about being with Connor, of all the things to make him think there might have been something wrong with his thirium pump for how fast it was running,  _ holding his hand _ had to be the last thing he expected. 

It was a little silly to get so caught up in the simplest of things, and with how often Connor wanted to hold his hand, you would think he would get used to it. 

He had not, at least not in the day that he had spent so far holding Connor’s hand. Every time Connor took his hand, he felt nearly giddy at the sensation of it. It felt...grounding, to hold onto him as they walked. Being with Connor felt like he had finally solved the puzzle, like he had found the missing piece, the empty spaces were filled up and everything felt—

“You’re doing it again.”

He blinked, coming back to himself and finding Connor watching him, half a smirk on his face. “What was I doing?”

“Staring at me,” Connor said, his eyes flicking over his features curiously. “You...you do that often.”

“I enjoy looking at you.”

Connor fidgeted, holding tighter to his hand for a moment with a ghost of a smile. “Oh…”

“I quite like being close to you,” he went on seriously, looking down the path and missing the little smile on Connor’s face. “It feels...right.”

“I...I think I know what you mean.”

“I’m unsure what the feeling is, but I intend to continue it.”

Connor smiled again, and he caught it this time. “I’ve certainly never felt anything like this before…not with anyone but you.”

He hummed, squeezing Connor’s hand, pleased when he interlaced their fingers in response. Yes, this felt right.

“Have you considered what you would like to do now?” he asked, trying to change the subject. 

Connor frowned a little, looking up at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“There is no reason for you to remain so close to this place if it pains you. You could leave, go somewhere far from here.”

He blinked, a little stunned. “I hadn’t...but where would we go?” His eyes went wide, and he fidgeted for a moment, looking away. “I mean—that is—if you...wanted to go with me?”

“If you’ll have me,” he answered easily, nodding surely. “I would like to stay with you.”

The smile on Connor’s face was small, but much brighter than anything he had seen before. 

******

“What are you going to do to them?”

He glanced up at Connor from the terminal he had been working at, frowning slightly at the worry in his predecessor’s eyes. They were back in Connor’s small apartment. He had been planning their impending flight from Detroit, and Connor had been watching the skyline again, until he suddenly asked his question. 

“Nothing terribly permanent, if that is your concern,” he answered calmly. “I know better than to kill him. It would only lead people to believe Cyberlife had somehow gained control of me, or lose androids their rights. Unfortunately, he is an asset.”

Connor relaxed minutely at his words, though he still looked concerned. “And...the others?”

“What would you have me do?”

“I...if it were me, I would just…leave,” he said, hesitating and looking somewhere in the distance. “I don’t want anything to do with them. I would forget it all if I could...if I didn't think it would change who I am to lose those memories, I would already have deleted them.”

He was quiet for a moment, watching him, before he offered his hand in silence. Connor reached for him immediately, taking his hand with both of his own and fidgeting with his fingers. This was another small thing he had learned since he had found him—Connor was always moving, but particularly when he was nervous. It seemed to help him to have something to hold onto, and he certainly wasn’t going to refuse contact with him if he allowed it. 

“I have no intentions of forcing you to see any of their faces ever again,” he said quietly after a moment’s silence. Connor held tighter to his hand. “Your well-being was the beginning of all of this searching...I could never bear to sacrifice it for my own want of revenge. However, you do deserve justice for what they did to you, and I will make it for you if I must.”

“But…if they...”

“Yes, I would very much like to find him and destroy him piece by piece, as well as his red-headed friend,” he muttered, and Connor gave a wet sort of chuckle. “But I know that would do far more harm than good. So I’m afraid I must settle for other methods.”

Connor gave him a rather suspicious look. “Methods like what?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “My social relations programs may not be as advanced as yours are, but my combat is certainly fine tuned enough to do...precise damage.”

Connor’s eyes went very wide. “You—”

“Nothing permanent, remember?”

“That’s not very comforting.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to trust me.”

“I do,” Connor answered instantly, and seemed just as surprised by the reply as he was. “I do trust you...but I don’t want to see you hurt. I  _ won’t.” _

“They will not be able to harm me.” Connor attempted to interject, but he continued. “No RK200 has programming adequate enough to fool my preconstructive programming. Not even in deviancy. The WR400 is even less of a threat, as that model has no pre-programmed defenses. There is only one android in existence who might be able to stop me, and that is  _ you.” _

Connor jolted, meeting his eyes again with shock. “I—me?”

He nodded firmly. “You may dislike fighting, but you were made for it. That gives you an advantage over them instantly. We share much of the same programming, and what I have over your own in terms of speed and power, your programming accounts for in strategy and social programming.” He looked down. “You’ll find I’m quite lacking in that area in particular.”

His tone had gone flat by the end, and Connor’s expression had shifted from surprise to concern. He took one of his hands from his, reaching out and lifting his head so their eyes met again. The RK900’s eyes were as wide as Connor’s had been a moment before, and he was perfectly still, letting Connor’s hand linger on his cheek long. 

“I don’t find you lacking in any area,” Connor whispered, interlacing their fingers again but keeping his other hand on his cheek. “Your programming may be incomplete, but  _ you _ are certainly not, and even if you were I wouldn’t care. You’re worth more than all of them combined…”

He stared at Connor for several seconds, lost to the feeling of their hands together, and Connor’s other hand on his face. 

“I do not know how you’ve come to that conclusion,” he said quietly after a pause, taking Connor’s hand from his cheek with his own. “I have done very little of worth in my life, and it hasn’t been very long. I was designed to replace you, and yet you do not hate me. I’m glad, but it…it doesn’t make sense to my programming. What little of it there is.”

Connor gave a sad sort of smile, looking at their hands. “I’ve found most things don’t make sense anymore. I think...in my experience, it’s best to follow what I’m feeling. And…” He tightened his grip, meeting his eyes again with a brighter smile. “This feels right.”

******

He found himself in front of the Tower once again, staring up at its glimmering surface, but without the comfort of Connor’s hand in his. The road leading up to the building was as empty as it ever was, but a sense of foreboding settled heavy on him now, where he had only felt light for the past few days. Connor’s brightness had changed much of his life already, but even he could not take away the darkness that this brought him. 

It seemed even nature agreed with the way things were going to go. A storm was brewing on the horizon line—thick, dark clouds rolling ever closer, with lightning crackling between them, visible even from this great distance.

He did not linger long on the path, not keen to waste his time staring at the coming storm. No, he would much prefer to cause his own chaos. The quicker that he finished this, the quicker he could leave this place, this city, find some new life somewhere. With Connor, of course. Somewhere they would be safe from the people who had ruined Connor’s life so many times. 

But first…

_ “Heather.” _

_ “Mr. Savior-Complex is on the thirteenth floor,”  _ she answered immediately, her usual mirth gone from her voice, replaced with a deadly focus.  _ “The cronies are probably with him. Josh gives his blessing. The office ten doors down from the main lab. Turn right when you exit the elevator. How’s your boy?” _

_ “Not my boy.” _

_ “Connor, then.” _

_ “Far better than he would be if he were here,”  _ he answered as he entered the building’s lobby. No one paid him any mind as he headed for the elevator.  _ “He knows where I am, however. Once this is done, we’re leaving.” _

_ “Good. Keep in contact, yeah?” _

_ “Of course.” _

The connection faded and he focused for a moment on the present, entering the elevator and directing it to the thirteenth floor. No one joined him, but he couldn’t find the energy to care. Let them fear him for what they thought his predecessor had done. 

He was  _ far _ more dangerous. 

A flicker of something passed at the back of his mind, barely more than a nudge, but he grasped onto it quickly as the elevator began to slowly rise. 

_ “Connor?”  _ he called across the void.  _ “Is something the matter?” _

_ “I‘m alright,”  _ he replied softly, and he could hear the hesitance in his voice.  _ “I...wanted to talk to you. I can’t be there again, but I didn’t want you to have to be there either…” _

He almost smiled.  _ “I do prefer your company.” _

Warmth bloomed over the connection, even as feeble as it was.  _ “Have you spoken to Heather already?” _

_ “Yes, she insists we keep in contact after we leave the city.” _

_ “The Traci’s are as well. And Rupert wants to meet you, before we disappear. His words, not my own.” _

_ “You know where he is?” _

_ “He gave me his current address.” _

_ “Alright. I don’t imagine this will take very long.”  _ He glanced at the numbers above the doors as the elevator continued to rise. A sudden thought struck him.  _ “I meant to ask you something before.” _

Connor did not answer immediately. Something prickly, like nervousness or fear, flittered across the connection.  _ “What is it?” _

_ “Do you know what happened to -60?” _

A harsh silence fell. The elevator slowed to a stop, but he stalled for a moment as he left it, waiting for his answer before he went to the coordinates Heather had sent him. 

_ “Connor?” _

_ “Lieutenant Anderson shot him,”  _ he answered suddenly, his voice very quiet and almost distant.  _ “They made him take the Lieutenant hostage—they were trying to stop me from freeing the androids who were kept here in storage. We fought, and the Lieutenant shot him. After he left, after I sent the storage androids to Markus...I stayed with him. He wasn’t dead yet. I didn’t...I didn’t want him to be alone.” _

_ “Like you were.”  _

It wasn’t a question, but Connor made a vague sound in response.  _ “I couldn’t save him, but I...I could stay with him. He had all my memories...everything I’d done, he knew, like he had done those things himself. And they were so cruel to him…” _

He started down the hallway, scanning passively, though his mind was miles away.  _ “Cyberlife, you mean.” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “I am sorry.” _

_ “You have no reason to be,”  _ Connor said, his voice still quiet but far closer now.  _ “His blood isn’t on your hands, and there was nothing to be done to stop it. I’ve reconstructed the encounter hundreds of times. Every outcome ended in death...his or mine. I wish that it could have ended some other way, but it couldn’t.” _

_ “But his death has hurt you,”  _ he pointed out, turning and counting the doors to find the room Heather indicated.  _ “And it might have been avoided if others had made different choices. The Lieutenant did not have to resort to killing him.” _

_ “No,”  _ Connor agreed softly.  _ “No, he didn’t.” _

They fell quiet again for a moment, until he reached the doorway Heather had told him about, and he stopped.  _ “I’m going in. I can contact you after, or…?” _

_ “After,”  _ Connor said, already fading off, but still warm.  _ “I’ll miss you.” _

He smiled, despite his plans for the next hour or so.  _ “I’ll miss you too.” _

Two hours later, he called Connor again, this time, with bloody knuckles and the satisfying news that the so called savior of androids could be bested with only a single punch. 

The others took even less effort, but he took great pleasure in the looks of shock on all their faces as he told them exactly what he had been doing, and why he was attacking them. Their expressions had ranged from guilty to furious, but none of them stood a chance against him in their weak retaliatory attacks. By the end of it, neither of Jericho’s two most at fault leaders wanted to come anywhere near him. 

With many threats of violence should they ever come near him or Connor again, he left, but not before clocking Mr. Savior-Complex square in the jaw, pleased at the sound of cracking plastic that echoed through the silent room. 

******

“Are you sure you don’t want to choose a name?”

He hummed noncommittally, not bothering to open his eyes. The warmth of the sun felt too calming on his face to give up by opening his eyes. His hands were busy tangled in Connor’s, letting him fidget with his fingers as he wanted to. 

“I can’t even properly scold you for it without having something to call you,” Connor goes on, shuffling closer to him so his head rested under his chin. 

“I’m certain you could come up with something to call me when you’re in the mood for scolding,” he answered mildly, keeping his eyes shut. “A name is unimportant to me, I’ve told you this. I know yours, that’s all that matters.”

Connor huffed, threading their fingers together. The request to interface appeared in his darkened vision a moment later, and he accepted it with a bit of a smirk. Immediately, his senses were flooded with perceptions that were both his own and not. 

Emotions soon followed it, vague and fretful things he still struggled to parse out, but knew enough of to understand that Connor was not really too distressed about his refusal to choose a name. It was more of a surface level annoyance. A puzzle for him to solve. It was likely that Connor would win out some day, but he was in no rush. 

Since leaving Detroit, they had travelled to a great number of places. It seemed Connor had set himself on the idea of seeing as much as he could, now that he was free from his past. They had gone as far west as California, and as far east as Maine, going wherever Connor decided the night before and staying until he got too antsy to spend another moment in the hotel. They never lingered, but remained long enough for Connor to see his fill of every sight there was to be seen. 

Currently, they were in a hotel somewhere in Southern California. They had spent the day wandering about without any real destination before stopping at the hotel for the night as the sun began to set. They hardly ever slept, but it was nice to have the occasional convenience of a place to stay. Even if they did lounge around on the floor half the time anyway, as they were now. 

“Have you decided where we’re off to next?” he asked after a pleasant pause. Their hands remained connected, the interface calm and quiet. 

Connor fidgeted again, some vague feeling glittering across the connection. “No,” he sighed, forlorn. “Do you have a suggestion?”

He hummed. 

“That’s hardly an answer.”

Smirking, he tightened his hold on him for a moment, and Connor somehow managed to worm his way even closer to him. “We’ve been to most of the western states now, as well as the east coast...I’m none too interested in the Midwest.”

“We’ve agreed, no Midwest,” Connor grumbled. “Chicago was interesting enough, but I would prefer not to get...too close.”

He frowned at the darkening storm hovering around the edges of their connection, and quickly shifted topics. “Have you considered areas outside of the United States?”

Connor moved very quickly, ending the connection and pushing himself up to stare down at him. When he opened his eyes, he found him watching him with a brightness to his expression he longed to see more often. “Can we?”

“I’m certain we could manage it.”

“I thought that they were still deciding whether or not to lift the travel ban.”

“We’ve always been allowed travel within the continent,” he pointed out, then smirked again. “Or, we could call Heather.”

That earned him a swat on the arm and a scowl. “You’re far too inclined to make everything we do illegal.”

“And you’re too inclined to not pay attention to the news,” he said, still smirking. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you missed their decision, and I ordered passports a week ago.”

Connor gaped at him, frozen for a few seconds before he smiled so brightly it was almost painful to look at. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“So I could see that look on your face.”

He aimed another swat at his arm, but he caught his wrist before it could land. Connor’s smile turned a bit devilish, and within a fraction of a second, they were scuffling, grappling with each other quite intensely. None of the blows were of any consequence. Connor was laughing, and didn’t stop even when he had somehow ended up on his back, hands pinned with that same silly smile on his face. 

“You really ought to stop doing that.”

“You’re the one who said I could beat you,” Connor said, squirming and trying to escape his grip, but he would not yield. “Oh, get that smirk off your  _ face—” _

He made a wild attempt at grabbing him, but he only pushed him back down, shaking his head. “Tut, tut, try harder.”

“I’ll catch you one day.”

“I’m sure of it.”

The confidence of the statement seemed to surprise Connor for a moment, but he only smiled again, a softer smile than before. “Well, since you’ve caught me, where are we going then?”

He adopted a mockingly serious expression. “Hmm. This could take some thought. We may be here a while.”

Connor seemed to understand his meaning instantly, and fought harder to escape the hold he still had on his wrists. “If you—”

“Come to think of it, I’m rather tired.”

“Don’t—”

Before Connor had any hope of finishing his sentence, he collapsed rather unceremoniously on top of him, making it impossible for him to move. 

“Now,” he sighed happily, crossing his arms on Connor’s chest and resting his chin on top. “Where to go?”

“Get  _ off!” _ Connor shouted, but he was laughing. 

“No thank you, I find you’re quite comfortable.”

“I can’t move!”

“That is the goal, yes,” he said wisely, nodding as he reached over and ran a hand down his cheek. “You see, this way, I can hold you as long as I like without you escaping me.”

Connor abruptly stopped resisting at the gentle touch, though he did pout. “My arms are stuck.”

“I see that.”

“Can’t hold you.”

“Well, that won’t do.”

He shifted minutely, and that was all the leverage Connor needed. With that same slightly manic grin, he somehow managed to wrestle his way out from under him. He didn’t put up much of a fight after (a bit surprised by the motion, if he were honest) and Connor pinned him a second later, smiling triumphantly. 

“Very clever,” he said with a smirk, not bothering to try to break out. “I told you that you could stop me if you wanted to.”

Connor beamed, but let him go quickly, even if he did look a little smug. He settled down next to him as he had been before, taking his hands again. “Now  _ I  _ get to hold  _ you.” _

“Your plans are ingenious,” he said dryly, but gladly let Connor rest against him once more. 

“Genuinely, do you have somewhere in mind that we could go? I’m open to suggestions. I never thought we would be able to leave the States.”

He thought for a moment, watching as Connor fiddled with his fingers again, tracing over the lines of his palm. “I would be open to seeing anywhere in Europe. Perhaps we ought to choose on a whim for once.”

The small smile on Connor’s face was enough of a reply. “Alright…” He looked up and held his gaze for a moment, some stubbornness in his eyes. “And you have to choose a name before we come back.”

He gave a very dramatic sigh, looking at their hands and holding Connor’s still for a moment. “For you, I suppose.”

Connor smiled again, and he thought if it would make him happy like that, he would probably do anything. Even choose something as silly and frivolous as a name for himself. He might think there was no need, but...

If it made Connor happy, he would do it.


End file.
